OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES; AND THE LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ON THE REBELLION. JOHN P. KENNEDY. NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, ASSOCIATION BUILDING. 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by THE EXECUTORS OF JOHN P. KENNEDY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. STEREOTYPED BY PRINTED BY WILLIAM McCREA & CO., JOSEPH J. LITTLE, NEWBURGH, N. Y. 108-114 Wooster Street, New York. E4-I5 A3 CONTENTS. P-LOE. Address Delivered on Behalf of The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, on the Occasion of the Opening of the Collegiate Department in the University of Maryland, on the 3d of January, 1831 9 Address Delivered before the Horticultural Society of Maryland, at its First Annual Exhibition, June 12, 1833 27 An Address Delivered before the American Institute, at Chatham Street Chapel in the City of New York, October 17, 1833 48 A Discourse on the Life and Character of William Wirt, late At torney-General of the United States ; Pronounced at the Re quest of the Baltimore Bar before the Citizens of Baltimore, on the 20th of May, 1834 78 Address at the Dedication of Green Mount Cemetery, ?uly 13th, 1839 Ill Discourse on the Life and Character of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, before the Maryland Historical Society, De- ember 9, 1855 125 Appendix to the Discourse on the Life and Character of George Calvert 165 The Life of William Thorn : A Lecture Delivered February 4, 1846, before the Asbury Sabbath School 216 Address Delivered before the Maryland Institute for the Promo tion of the Mechanic Arts, on the Occasion of the Opening of the Fourth Annual Exhibition, on the 21st October, 1851 242 The Spirit of the Age ; False and True Progress : A Lecture De livered before the Mechanics Institute, Baltimore, February 7th, 1854 273 Address at the Inauguration of the Peabody Institute 305 M55548O CONTENTS. LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ON THE REBELLION. I 1 AGE. A Word to the Reader , 831 Letter I. Introductory 835 Letter II. Sudden Conversions 337 Letter III. Secession 343 Letter IV. Secession 360 Letter V. Revolution 372 Letter VI. Revolution 383 Letter VII. Rebellion 396 Letter VIII. Conspiracy 416 Letter IX. State Rights 437 Letter X. State Sovereignty 452 Letter XI. Peace . . . . 468 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ADDKESS DELIVERED ON BEHALF OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MARY LAND, ON THE 3D OF JANUARY, 1831. THE citizens of Baltimore have been lately invited to the consideration of a plan, submitted to them by the trus tees of the university, for carrying into effect the design of the Legislature in reference to that institution. It is more a matter of surprise that this undertaking should not before have been brought into the public view, than that it should, at this time, begin to excite an interest among our citizens. The inducements which might be expected to urge and promote such an establishment have, for some years past, been sufficiently apparent to render it a natural inquiry, why this scheme has been delayed so long, The present age is characterized by a powerful impulse to wards a reform of the institutions of society. Men have been made more conversant with the principles of free government ; they have been taught to discard ancient prejudices ; and to in vestigate those subjects, upon a knowledge of which depends the capacity to multiply and diffuse the conveniences of life. A wholesome spirit of inquiry has travelled through all the de partments of society, with a purpose to ascertain their defects, and where it should be found necessary, to remodel their struc- 10 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ture. The result of this review has been to pull down, with an unscrupulous hand, the heavy lumber of antiquity, and, in the place of the cumbersome machinery by which man had here tofore wrought out his allotted task, to introduce the swift, powerful, and easy -working mechanism of our own times. Upon the progress and success of this improvement, edu cation has had a significant influence. It is quite manifest, that the only efficient means of assailing ancient habits, and of conquering the deep-rooted errors that belong to generations, must be found in the early inculcation of opposite opinions, and in the careful infusion into the mind, through the channel of the schools, of a sounder philosophy. This consideration has attracted an earnest attention to the purposes and process of education, and has latterly brought an authoritative combi nation of intellect to the investigation of this question. The consequence has been, in many parts of Europe and America, important changes, in the ends proposed, and in the means pursued, in the discipline of the mind. Under these changes the uses of education have been enlarged ; its fruits have grown to be more various, and its applicability to the direct purpose of human happiness has been demonstrated by the ex tension of the circle of our comforts, under circumstances plainly referrible to the immediate influence of science. This new view in which the subject has been considered, has al ready given a more profitable direction to the occupations of the young ; and the present generation are quietly adopting and circulating improvements in the system of teaching, of which the general aim is to employ the faculties of the student in pursuits that will set him upon a level with the advanced state of philosophy. The study of the schools has been shaped more immediately to the end of preparing the student to step upon the arena with the weapons in his hand which his future employments may require him to use. The multiplica tion of the paths of knowledge has induced the necessity of economizing the time and strength of the young pilgrim, to fit him for the varied and honorable toils of his journey, without ARTS AND SCIENCES. 11 wasting his vigor upon pursuits that contribute neither to the service nor to the embellishment of life. The jargon of the academy, with all its ingenious trifling, is hushed into the sleep of death, and rests, in irretrievable oblivion, in the nooks of the antiquarian s library, in reverend and quaint fellowship with its forgotten patrons Duns Scotus, the most subtle doctor, and Thomas Aquinas, the angel of the schools, as their followers have styled them. This reform is especially interesting to our own country. It belongs to the position of the United States to foster this spirit with a conspicuous zeal. We are affined by no tie to the abuses which Europe has always found it so difficult to con quer : we have no ancient worn track to guide our march: the high road, upon which we have set out, is neither hemmed in by the barricades of custom, nor bounded by fields over which it is forbidden to range. Our object is the diffusive happiness of our people our means, freedom of thought and action. No country stands upon a more enviable vantage ground for the successful expansion of intellect. That we have not marched forward as rapidly in science, as we have advanced in the sub stantial enjoyments of life, must, therefore, be attributed to causes entirely independent of our capacity to cultivate it with success. These causes have been supposed to exist in the keen appetite of our population for what is immediately profitable, in preference to that which would reflect glory upon the coun try ; and they have also been imputed to the fact that our in tercourse with the continent of Europe, has furnished us the sci ence and philosophy of older nations in an abundance that fore- stals all our wants, and allows us to enjoy, in indolent repose, the fruits of foreign toil. Whether this imputation be just or not, I think it certain that the favorable development of our national strength, up to the present period, is to be attrib uted less to an extraordinary share of intellect in our popu lation, than to the singularly felicitous auspices under which we have addressed ourselves to the task. It is a fact, which we cannot conceal from ourselves if we would, that our nation- 12 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. al fame derives but little of its lustre from our monuments of science and letters. A vain-glorious estimate of ourselves is charged upon us as a national fault. It may be true. I listen with becoming deference to the judgment of impartial strangers upon this point, and profit by the motive which it furnishes to a careful survey of our own pretensions. Within moderate lim its the propensity is harmless. I can make allowance for the self-gratulation of a people, taken by surprise, in each succes sive step of their advancement, by the marvels of an empire rushing onwards, with all the philosophy, wisdom and learning of mankind thrown into its cradle : an empire whose career has begun at the point of civilization where older nations end. I can make allowance for a people placed in such a predicament, and am not unprepared to expect that they should fall into the mistake of ascribing to personal merit the praise that belongs to fortune. It is wise, however, not to mistake too largely that good fortune, nor to rely too confidently upon it. A presump tuous confidence will scarcely fail to be visited with a condign overthrow. If it be an object of our ambition to strengthen and beau tify the inheritance we have received from our forefathers, and to give a permanent renown to our country, we cannot devote ourselves to that purpose in any manner so surely as by rear ing up, in the bosom of our society, institutions for the ad vancement of learning, not merely in the elemental stages, but in its widest and most comprehensive range. Our people, in general, are as well, perhaps better, supplied with the rudi ments of education than those of any other land ; but, as yet, we stand in need of establishments where the arts and sciences may be made familiar to that portion of our citizens whose means are too straitened to seek them in remote places, and where they may be cultivated in connection with the general business of life. We are not, however, without illustrious ex amples to encourage us in the hope that this deficiency is to be felt but for a short time. Boston has long been conspicu ous for her liberal concern in this question : her atmosphere is ARTS AND SOIP:NCES. 13 redolent of science ; her public halls are thronged with a pop ulation, who delight to grace the cares of business with the flowers of intellectual culture ; her chief honor reposes on the hoary summit of her ancient university. Virginia has built up, with a profuse munificence, a temple in the bosom of her land, where her sons shall long be invited to drink of the pure wa ters of wisdom, and where future generations shall contem plate in this structure the noblest monument that our age has erected to its most exalted citizen. Philadelphia, enlightened by the same spirit, has lately given honorable testimony of her devotion to this cause in the establihsment of a university which is cherished by her best citizens with a liberal and intelligent estimate of its value. The city of New York is awakened to the importance of the same question ; and the frequent pile, dedicated to these purposes, springing up over the wide face of our country, attests the growing interest which this cause excites in every quarter of the United States. These enter- prises speak a pervading sentiment : they address to the intel ligent patriot a solemn exhortation to foster and corroborate that ambition whose end is the happiness of society, and the perpetuation of the principles upon which that happiness de pends. It is long since it became an object in the policy of Maryland to plant a University within her confines. In 1784 provision was made for that purpose by the incorporation of St. John s and Washington Colleges, under the comprehensive title of the University of Maryland. The two constituents of that establishment were liberally endowed, and went into oper ation under circumstances that promised permanent and ex tensive usefulness. The latter of the two colleges was situated at Annapolis, and for a time held a high rank among the insti tutions of this State. The men of that day anticipated, with a fond interest, the growth of the metropolis into a large and flourishing city. At that period, it enjoyed a brilliant noto riety throughout this continent, for its refined and cultivated society, and there was every reason to believe that the wealth of commerce and the tide of population would be poured into 14: OCCASIONAL ADDJJE8SES. its lap, and give it that rank and station as a city, which uncal- culated causes have since conferred upon the spot of our pres ent residence. The fact, therefore, of the establishment of the University at Annapolis, is useful to show the opinion of its founders, at that early day, in favor of erecting the princi pal seat of learning of the State, in its principal city ; and may, perhaps, serve to convince some of those who have prejudices on this score, that the popular opinion against placing the great institutions for education in the midst of the chief as semblages of population, is not so old, nor so generally re ceived, as many persons are apt to believe. It is not out of the way to say, that the individuals princi pally instrumental in establishing that University, were men whose opinions may be repeated with respect. They com posed a society eminent for wisdom, intellectual force and lofty patriotism. Whatever our little State has won of former renown ; however dignified in her annals by elevated worth and great ability ; whatever, in truth, remains to us, which a ., citizen may be pleased to dwell upon, will be connected in our remembrance with the names of those who first conceived the plan of the old University. It is but a just tribute to that departed generation, to say, that they have left none behind them who may not- adopt their spirit and study their policy with advantage. In the organization of that University, the attention of its founders was directed only to the department of the Arts and Sciences. This department ranked, in the public estimate, above either of the collateral faculties of Divinity, Law or Physic, as it was believed that in the course of study pursued in it, a foundation would be laid for the production of schol ars, in whose maturer age the different professions were after wards to find their proper candidates. That pernicious retrograde of opinion, which this State sub sequently experienced, in the wild and turbulent fervors of party contest, visited this institution with a deadly frost. The endowments of Washington and St John s Colleges were re- ARTS AND SCIENCES. 15 ducerl to a sum inadequate to their maintenance ; a decline ensued, and, in the end, completely frustrated the beneficent purpose contemplated in the erection of the former University of Maryland. In the year 1812, the people of Maryland were awakened to a fresh consideration of this subject, and from that period is dated the revival of the University, and under new and happier auspices. In what manner that institution has been conduct ed up to the present period ; what share it has attracted of the public attention ; what patronage it has derived from the State ; how guarded, nursed and invigorated ; what difficulties it has found in its path, and how it has surmounted them, have been, from this place, on a former occasion, most eloquently and viv idly pictured by the gentleman to whom that duty had been very appropriately assigned by the trustees. I am only con cerned, for the present, to say, that in this renewed effort to place the advantages of a university within the reach of the cit izens of Maryland, the first object of the Legislature has been to carry into active operation the Faculties of Law and Physic, while those of Divinity and the Arts and Sciences have been postponed until the necessity for their co-operation should be more peremptorily solicited by the wants and demands of the people. It has been explained, on the occasion to which I have be fore referred, under what circumstances the trustees have con sidered it to be their duty to invite the patronage of the State to the immediate support of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. That Faculty have delegated to me the duty of explaining to this meeting, the general outlines of their organization, the ob jects which they hope to attain, and the circumstances under which they are about to commence their labors. The public has already been made acquainted with the fact, that the greater part of this Faculty has been but recently appointed. The chairs of Political Economy, History and Natural Philos ophy have been filled for some years past, but without any condition on the part of the trustees of the University that the 16 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. incumbents should be required to deliver lectures. In the course of the last year, the trustees, however, considered it to be their duty to complete the appointments of this Faculty, with a view to their instant entering upon the appropriate offi ces of such a body. It will be perceived, by the advertise ments of the plan which has been for some- time past before the public, that this Faculty consists of eleven professorships, to wit : Of Ancient Languages, History, Political Economy, Natu ral Philosophy, Mineralogy and Geology, Natural History, Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, Moral and Intellectual Philoso phy, Botany, Mathematics, and Chemistry applied to the Arts. It was supposed that, at least for the present, the range of study indicated by the establishment of these chairs would fully embrace all the necessary elements of education, short of professional pursuits ; and that a careful application to this course would qualify any student for admission into the Fac ulties of Law, Physic, or Divinity. The two former of these Faculties, the public are aware, have, for some time past, been diligently engaged in their separate vocations. And in the last of the three, the professor of Theology has occasionally delivered lectures in this city. As soon as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were thus called into existence, they were required by the trustees to submit a plan for their own organization, which should fall in with what was known to be the design of the trustees in their appointment. This subject has been the theme of constant and anxious deliberation on the part of that Faculty. It oc curred to them that nothing could be more conducive to the purpose of their institution, than to erect a Collegiate Depart ment in the University, in which provision should be made for the usual studies pursued in the best colleges on our own con tinent, or in other countries. The Faculty, therefore, reported a plan of college study, as ample, comprehensive and useful as their experience, guided by reference to the best models, enabled them to suggest. That plan has been published, and AKTS AND SCIENCES. 17 partially distributed through the State. It is not necessary for me here to recapitulate its details, as it may be seen by any person who feels an interest in the investigation. I will, how ever, observe that the course of college study prescribed in that plan, while it is adapted to the time allowed to each stu dent in his college career, is, I believe, more extensive in the variety of the attainments which it puts within his reach, than that of any similar institution in this country. It will require great industry to accomplish the prescribed routine, although it is so arranged as to be within the ability of a diligent stu dent to master its details in the allotted period. It will also be seen, by reference to that plan, that previous studies, embracing the common round of academical educa tion, are necessary for those who would enter the lowest class of the College Department. When these requisitions for ad mission come to be examined and understood by the commu nity, it is believed that the Academies of the State will gener ally shape their course of instruction to the preparation of their students for admission into the University, and thus be come subsidiary to the promotion of the views of this Institu tion. Such a connection between the Elementary Schools and the University, cannot but be mutually beneficial, and particularly favorable to the wishes of all those parents and guardians, who are anxious that the children under their pro tection should have an opportunity of obtaining an enlarged and liberal education. In the mean time, however, the trus tees of the University have announced a determination. to es- tablish an Elementary School under their own superintendence, where the studies, preparatory to entrance into the University, may be pursued under the best masters and with a particular reference to the future admission of the youth into the College Department. My remarks heretofore have been confined to that part of the organization of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which concerns students entering with a view to the completion of the full course of studies, prescribed in the Collegiate De- 18 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES*. partment. There is another and very important feature in this system. It is the design of the trustees to render the University subservient to two great purposes. The first relates to the regular education of youth through all the branches of Science and Letters. The second is not less important. It is to open their halls to the free use of the public in each or any of the Departments. The first, principally concerns the youth iir their regular course of education, who may be desirous to ob tain the degrees and honors of the establishment ; the second concerns the community at large, persons of all ages and either sex, who may feel disposed to employ their leisure in the cultivation of any separate branch of Literature or Science. The course of study, set out in the organization of the Collegiate Department prescribes the terms upon which de grees are to be obtained. Those, however, who do not seek degrees ; whose aims in life, whose leisure or inclination may prompt them to confine their views to the attainment of par ticular branches of learning, will be afforded every facility in the accomplishment of their wishes. The lecture rooms will be open to their admission, on terms to be regulated hereaf ter, and every privilege belonging to the University short of obtaining degrees, in the free -access to its library, and the unrestricted attendance upon any of the classes, will be ac corded to students of this denomination. Such a feature in the constitution of the University is cal culated to give a diffusive character to its utility, of which, it is presumed, our community will not be slow to avail them selves The scope of this regulation is to impress upon the citizens of Baltimore, a love of the Liberal Sciences ; to invite them into the grave and pleasant pursuits of learning ; to bring to every man s door the wares of intellect, and tp teach them that the leisure which is squandered in idle pleasures or vacant quiet, may be turned to a profitable account by multi plying the enjoyments of thought, and exercising the faculties of mind. I can feel and understand the happy influence ARTS .AND SCIENCES. 19 which a successful administration of this scheme must have upon a society like ours. Every man has frequent occasion to feel how valuable a portion of his life is wasted in the mere apathy of rest ; none more than the man habitually devoted to his business. There are moments when the shade of unoc cupied feelings comes heavily over his mind, depressing his spirits, obscuring his enjoyments, and inflicting the pain of a melancholy moodiness upon his existence. To him, unblessed with the stores of intellectual pleasure, such visitations are sufficiently frequent to leave their impressions upon his char acter. We shall contribute in no small degree to the enjoy ments of that man, if we can succeed in luring him within the Halls of the University, and induce him to appropriate that modicum of his time, which is not solicited by his business, to the cultivation of the elegant and useful arts. The members of the several professions, too, will find many inducements to apply themselves to these studies. The progress of science can never be uninteresting or useless, in any of its depart ments, to them ; and if such pursuits have not hitherto occu pied a share of their time, it is because they have not had the facilities which the presence of a University can alone supply. To another class, this scheme must present a feature of ex tensive utility. To the youth of our city, of every rank and degree, the benefits which may be conferred by it are incal culable. It will furnish them an enlarged and rich field of ed ucation, and without intrenching upon the time allotted to their daily avocations, whether of business or elementary study, gradually introduce them to a general acquaintance with the circle of human learning ; point out to them the track of profitable inquiry, and train them in a habitual respect and attachment for the attainments of the mind. There are many young men in this city to whom the advantages of education have been in a great measure denied by circumstances, who, nevertheless, possess both capacity and inclination to master the secrets of philosophy, if the means of approaching them, and the aid of a guide were supplied by the institutions of the 20 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. society in which they are placed : deprived of these, the most valuable moments of their lives are lost in indolence, if not thrown away in the frivolous pursuits of pleasure. It is also presumed that the influence of the institution we propose to build up, will not be confined to our own sex. The studies of the University may be rendered, in many par ticulars, subservient to the purposes of female education ; and doubtless, the better educated portions of that sex, in the City of Baltimore, will find motives and occasion to avail them selves of the facilities which may be placed in their way. All these ends are to be accomplished by giving to the lectures a popular extension, beyond the mere requirements of the classes of the Collegiate Department. Courses of lec tures will be delivered from every chair, in which the several sciences will be treated from their elements to their more complicated relations, according to the most philosophical views of the subject. These lectures will be primarily adapt ed to the classes of the Collegiate Department, but they will also be conducted with a view to the popular character which shall render them useful to the community at large. They will be open, as I have before stated, to any persons who may feel an interest in the prosecution of the studies to which they refer, under regulations that will be made known before the lectures commence. The hours at which these lectures will be delivered, will be arranged as nearly as possible to suit the convenience of all persons ; and the lectures will be so distrib uted through the terms, so as to give the student, whose pur pose it is to attend the whole course, an opportunity of devo ting a proper portion of his time to each. Those lectures which relate to the physical sciences will be illustrated by the best philosophical and chemical apparatus, and with the aid of Cabinets of Natural History and Min eralogy. The trustees have already commenced the founda tion of a Library which, when completed, will be put under regulations that will render it useful to all those connected with the University. ARTS AND SCIENCES. 21 It will be seen, by reference to the course of study allotted to the Collegiate Department, that it embraces a very full cir cle of classical attainments, perhaps more than it may be proper in all instances to insist upon. If that should be found to be the case, the Faculty will take care to modify their plan so as to meet the capacity of the classes. To this course of classical study, which is placed under the special superintend ence of the professor of Ancient Languages, assisted by a competent number of tutors, is superadded an extensive field of scientific knowledge, which will be principally imparted by lectures. The classes are required to attend these lectures, according to the distribution of them set forth in the organiza tion of the College Department. The professor of Mathemat ics will commence his course with the Freshman Class, and pro ceed regularly onward to the Senior, requiring the attendance of each class to so much of the course of each year, as is ap propriate to their particular studies. The Sophomores are re quired to attend the lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, and the remaining lectures, namely : on History, Natural Phi losophy, Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Political Econo my, Natural History, Mineralogy and Geology, Chemistry ap plied to the Arts, and Botany, will constitute the principal studies of the Junior and Senior years. In the required attendance upon the lectures, the profes sors will exercise a special direction over the students of the Collegiate Department. They will be required to accompany the lectures with a course of reading auxiliary to the study in hand ; frequent examination will be made of the progress of each student, and his particular deportment made known to the Faculty, who, by that means, will be enabled to communi cate to the parents and guardians of the youth committed to their charge, all those particulars of which it may be interest ing to them to be informed. There is no provision made in the college course for lec tures upon Jurisprudence, because ample opportunities are afforded in the course of the professor of Law, in the Law 22 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Faculty, for a complete study of that interesting branch of science. The professor of Theology, also, in the Faculty of Divini ty, will deliver a course of lectures to the students of the Col legiate Department, on Natural Theology and the Evidences of Christianity, in which course the prominent feature of the charter of the University will be kept steadily in view, namely : that this establishment is to be supported upon the widest principle of religious toleration, and no preference is to be as serted of one religious sect over another. A further provision will also be made, in reference to this subject, that no student shall be required to attend the lectures on Theology but by the assent or direction of his parents or guardian. From the organization of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, they are required to bestow a particular attention upon the moral deportment of the young men committed to their charge, while not under the immediate inspection of their parents ; and that body will be careful to exact, from the students, close and unremitting industry, and the strictest observance of the discipline of the college. Examinations, to that end, will be frequently made by the Faculty, and, as often as required, in the presence of parents and guardians. Those who are found unqualified, upon such examinations, to be advanced in the classes, will be subjected to the necessity of prolonging their course ; and in cases of repeated remissness, or of flagrant misconduct, will be surrendered up to their parents as unfit for further discipline. It is not in contemplation to board or lodge the students in the college. It is believed that the congregation of many young men under the same roof is, in many respects, prejudi cial to a sound and wholesome control over their habits or their morals ; and the Faculty much prefer that the students should be committed to the care of protectors selected for them by their parents, and better than all, where it is possible, that they should be under the eye of the parents themselves. If, however, students should apply for admission, who are ARTS AND SCIENCES. 23 not residents of the City of Baltimore, or who have no guar dians in the city responsible for their conduct, the Faculty will make arrangements to have them boarded in respectable houses, on the cheapest terms, in the vicinity of the buildings of the University ; and will, as far as it is compatible with such an arrangement, exercise a close and careful supervision over the conduct of the youth in that situation. They would prefer, however, where it is in the power of parents or guar dians to effect such a regulation, that the students should be subjected to the control and government of some respectable inhabitant of the city. The Faculty have endeavored, in the organization of this plan, to render the whole course of education as little expen sive to the students as it was possible to make it, and have, therefore, fixed the annual charge of each student, who enters with a view to the University degrees, at the sum of one hun dred dollars per annum. This includes every charge for what belongs to the full college course, embracing his attendance upon the whole of the lectures. There are additional charges for those who wish to acquire the modern languages, upon which subject I beg leave to refer to the scheme heretofore published. This detail embraces the prominent points of the organiza tion of the Collegiate Department by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The plan is now about to go into operation. The period to which its commencement has heretofore been assign ed has just arrived, and as fast as the students are presented, the classes will be organized. With a view to ascertain the proper standing and grade of any applicant, and to determine into what class he is qualified to be admitted, examinations will be made as often as the occasion may present itself. In the beginning of such a scheme it is not to be expected that it shall be without its difficulties. Many candidates may be pre sented who, upon examination, may be found unqualified in the requisites which would entitle them to admission into the Freshman Class ; it is the determination of the Faculty strictly 24 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. to adhere to these requisitions, even if it should exclude every applicant ; and, also, to begin their course with any number, however small. It is hoped that parents and guardians will see in this course, the best pledge that the Faculty could give them, that they are actuated by a conscientious desire to make this experiment with the most earnest intention, on their part, to render it as largely tributary to the benefit of this com munity as possible. If there should be rejections of candi dates, in accordance with this determination, it is hoped that parents will be reconciled to the necessity of subjecting their children to the necessary preparation, and, with that view will not scruple to enter them into the Academical Department, which the trustees have lately provided with a particular de sign to prepare the young men there for admission into college on the most favorable terms. The citizens of Baltimore are thus furnished with an insight into the plan upon which it is attempted to erect a valuable literary institution within this city. They will perceive in the elements of this plan a sincere wish to render it an instrument of good to the present generation, and of honor to the next. It has been suggested by no other feeling than the plain con viction, which I have endeavored to express, of its necessity, and which has been urged with great warmth and ability by the gentleman who addressed our citizens on behalf of the trustees. As to the members of this Faculty, the public, it is hoped, will perceive that, from their station in society and oc cupations, they could have no selfish or interested purpose in assuming the toil of this organization, or the direction of its future movements. They could not be biassed by any hope of emolument to themselves, for it is very apparent that it must be a long time before the perfection of this scheme can possibly return them any adequate remuneration for the labor of prosecuting it through its early stages. Such an idea has, certainly, never entered into their thoughts. For myself, I speak with a clear conscience when I say, that I have no aim, in this undertaking, which does not look to the oublic advan- ARTS AND SCIENCES. 25 tage. My pursuits, like those of most of my colleagues, are strictly professional ; and I am aware that the time which I shall be constrained to devote to the performance of the duties I have assumed by my connection with this Faculty, must be wrung from the secret hours of the night, and spent in painful and assiduous toil. It must be made up from the fragments spared me in the pursuit of a solicitous and arduous profes sion. I am prepared to encounter the labor, and will devote the poor faculties with which God has endowed me, to its achievement, with a joyous spirit, if I can indulge a rational hope to see my efforts rewarded with success. My coadjutors stand in a like predicament, and will share in the feeling I have expressed, at the same result. We have been honored by the trustees in the appointments we hold, without solicita tion on our part, and are conscious that in accepting them we have assumed a high and perilous responsibility to the public. We think that the sacrifice we make entitles us to ask a zeal ous and indulgent co-operation from the intelligent community with which we are surrounded. There are both the means and the spirit among our citizens to achieve all that our fond est wishes have aspired to, if they can be enlisted in the cause. Our failure, after this effort, would produce disappointment and regret, though unattended with any sentiment of mortifi cation or self-abasement, because it would be an evidence, not that we are unworthy of success, but that the public are not sufficiently awake to the great and commanding interest which we have endeavored to impress upon them. If we succeed, then will follow a glorious consummation. We shall have the satisfaction to know that we have sown the seeds of a rich and bountiful harvest among this people : that we have communi cated to them an impulse that will quicken into action the noblest faculties that belong to man ; that will give new apti tudes to the genius of our citizens ; that will open bright and glorious visions upon their sight ; that will refine their feel ings, polish their manners, and elevate their character. We shall have erected a powerful engine, on this spot, whose 26 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. mechanism shall lift this whole society into a higher scale of being, and communicate to it an influence and weight that shall make it a subject .of praise and imitation throughout the wide extent of our union. With such a meed before us the hand that labors shall never grow tired, nor the heart faint. It rests with the parents and guardians of the youth of this city to respond to these hopes, and I confess I trust with con fidence to the intelligence of the people of Baltimore, that this occasion will not be allowed to pass away without such an ef ficient concurrence in our design as shall assure us that we have but to persevere in the performance of our duty, to secure the faithful fulfilment of theirs. HORTICULTURAL. 27 ADDKESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF MARY LAND, AT ITS FIRST ANNUAL EXHIBITION, JUNE 12, 1833. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE HORTICULTURAL SO CIETY : I hold it an undeserved favor that you have selected me to make the address on the occasion of the present celebra tion. Though not wanting in a just estimate of the worth of the objects of this society, nor of the efficiency of the means in your power to accomplish them, nay, not less imbued, I trust, thfan any of you, with a lively hope to see the institu tion which you have lately organized fulfil its destined purpose, and shed its manifold beneficent influences upon our com munity, yet I cannot but feel that there are many gentlemen among you, whose active zeal in this enterprise, whose pe culiar study of the pursuits to which it is allied, whose intel ligence, taste and scholarship might have directed your re gards to them, much more appropriately than to myself, when you were about to appoint an individual to recommend in public discourse the excellent aims for which you have asso ciated. In allotting this duty to me, therefore, I must be per mitted to esteem it a personal token of your consideration, for which I am bound to make you a grateful acknowledg ment ; and I desire to add to this expression of my thanks, the avowal that the task you have set before me is one which I take an especial pleasure in performing. I approach it with a cheerful resolution, because, in the first place, I feel assured that the same friendly concern which impelled you to 28 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. put this duty upon me, will indulgently overlook the necessary imperfections of my performance ; and, in the second place, because the subject itself is full of agreeable appliances and pleasant topics. I address you in the midst of a wilderness of sweets, where the eye has been delighted with the most exquisite of nature s forms and colors, developed in her choicest flowers, and where the air is redolent with the odor of a thousand perfumes : the treasures of the neighboring gardens have been spread around you in a splendid array of rare and luxuriant productions : this hall has been transmuted into a charmed grotto, where one might fancy some unearthly enchanter had wrought his spell to delight the senses with all the riches of shape, hue and fragrance : " Ten thousand colors wafted through the air, In magic glances, play upon the eye, Combining in their endless fairy forms A wild creation." Around you, participating in this banquet of delights, are gathered your friends and neighbors, all joyous as yourselves, giving and receiving the quick impulse of pleasure engendered by the scene, and, by the sympathy of mutual satisfactions, quickening, enlarging and renewing the cheerfulness of this festival. Here, as if in rivalry with the delicate perfections of this congregation of plant and flower, are grouped about us the not less brilliant assemblage of our fair townswomen, of whom it is no flattery to say that their far-renowned beauty is the least of their attractions. Their presence here is an auspicious omen for the success of your undertaking. Where they delight to come, we may assure ourselves that the grace ful genius of their sex will infuse into the labors and observ ances of the place the predominating flavor of their own sensitive and refined taste. This hall of flowers should be peculiarly their temple ; and we would fain hope that at each return of this celebration we may find the pursuits and labors of the society applauded, promoted and sustained by the HORTICULTURAL. 29 increasing zeal with which the ladies of Baltimore devote themselves to its prosperity. Then, too, the season of the year at which we meet lends no small share of allurement to the festivity of this ceremony. Spring has just fallen into the arms of summer : the freshest green is on the fields, the deepest shade is in the grove : the balmy air breathes of rural enjoyment : fruits and flowers are found united in the gardens ; and all that spring can furnish of the beautiful is mingled with much that summer can supply of the delicious. The physical frame of man is yet unexhausted by prolonged heats ; the timely and frequent shower yet refreshes the face of earth, and no parching drouth at this season deforms the land scape ; Vertumnus has successively discarded his various dis guises, and has won the prudish Pomona, and Flora is close in the train of the wedded pair. This may, therefore, be emphatically called the season of delight and beauty. From all these causes, I may truly say my theme is full of agreeable topics, and that to descant on them, as is my prov ince, is more of a recreation than a task. Would that I were able adequately to express the emotions which the contempla tion of these subjects raises in my mind ! that I were able to excite in your breasts the keen sense of enjoyment with which my own is moved in the discharge of the duty to which your kindness has called me ! This is the first public exhibition of the society. It is an experiment upon the taste and feeling of this community ; and from the general and favorable interest which the endeavor has won, I think it can scarcely be deemed an experiment of doubtful success. If the event be prosperous, it will furnish a gratifying evidence that the citizens of our State have arrived at a wholesome elevation of moral and intellectual refinement. Every stage of society, in the progress of man from rude and unpolished life up to the extreme of civilization, is distin guished by its appropriate character. In the first or earlier eras, we may see him struggling, with unassisted strength, for the mere rough materials of subsistence : a little more advanced, 30 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. we shall find him diligent and inventive to enlarge the num ber of his comforts : still further on his career, his history will present him in search of superfluities ; the elegancies of life will then engage his pursuit, and he will be assiduous to ac cumulate what may adorn and illustrate his condition : pass ing forward beyond this stage, his high-fed desires and stimu lated passions scorn the wholesome aliment that previously made him happy, and he will covet far-sought enjoyments ; his taste rendered vicious by satiety, difficult to please, adulterated and sickly, will only be content with the gratifications which are to be procured at the greatest cost, and with the largest and most perilous expenditure of labor. Such, in brief, is the march of humanity : and thus do the wants of that restless, changeful creature man provoke him to pursuits and attain ments which severally give a sign or character to the manifold varieties of human society, from the day of the unthralled sav age, to that of the frivolous and effete voluptuary. I need not say, that the middle degrees on this scale are the most healthful and the most happy : they unite the hardi hood and endeavor of primitive society with the refinement of the elder changes alike removed from the vices of both. It is worth observation that in the infancy of social exist ence man works alone. He works at odds and disavantage with his adversary want ; his young invention has not yet sup plied him with implements : a bare right arm, braced by toil and brawny by use, is the weapon with which he goes forth to do battle with hunger. The skin of the conquered Nemean lion is the only garment of this Hercules ; and with no other assistance than that of his club he destroys the wild boar of Erymanthus, and drags up the triple headed Cerberus to the light of the sun. His is the victory achieved by brute force, and with many an agonizing strain of the muscles ; and when he prostrates his giant enemy and sets his foot upon his breast, he dashes the drops from his brow, as one who has gained the day in a mortal encounter. It is not long, however, before he finds that his fellow-man may be made an efficient instrument HORTICULTURAL. 31 in this war with necessity : that a combination will avail more than separate and unconcerted struggles ; and with this aim he subdues his brother and enlists him as a co-laborer. Then he discovers further, that working with associated mind, as well as with united strength, increases his power an hun dred fold. This important secret of association is no sooner carried into use than the whole surface of human existence changes : improvement rapidly follows on the steps of improve ment ; useful things abound ; comforts, luxuries, elegancies spring up like magical creations : life moves upon multiplied springs and wheels : the work of hands grows to be insignifi cant, when set beside the work of minds that have seized upon the great enginery of nature. Wind, and water, and fire, and vapor are brought into tremendous alliance ; and man, the dwarf, becomes an irresistible giant, and smiles at the marvel lous speed and overwhelming impetus with which his omnipo tent machinery produces whatsoever his genius directs. The same sense and insight, that has taught us the value of this power of combination of individuals for the procure ment of things indispensable, also instructs us in the useful ness of association for the procurement of things that belong to the luxury of life ; and it is accordingly a characteristic of this age, remarkable beyond all former precedent, to build up societies for the encouragement and improvement of the ele gant arts. It is a good sign to see a community arrived at that point of moral culture and education at which the people think of establishing these institutions. It speaks of the taste, the refinement, and the virtue of the nation. It tells of the abandonment of the rudeness of unfurnished and unlettered society, and of the substitution of intellectual pleasures for gross and sensual indulgences. It shows us that sober and intelligent industry is attaining its great and glorious aim ; that it is arriving at its healthful maturity, and is producing the fruits correspondent to the nature of the seed ; that it is making a sound, happy, enlightened nation, such as all wise founders of states have pictured to themselves when they have 32 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. laid the foundation of empires. It is good, therefore, to see a people bestow their care upon a liberal support of painting, statuary, architecture, music, and all the other arts which adorn the condition of society. Among these other arts, that of plant ing seeds and tilling the earth, for the sake of fruit and flow ers, holds a place full as high, as worthy, and as excellent as any in the catalogue. The citizens of Baltimore and its neighborhood have, for many years past, been distinguished for the productions of their gardens ; at least in that most useful department con cerned with the cultivation of vegetables and fruits for the ta ble. The climate of this region is eminently favorable to this culture. Our central position, or middle latitude, enables us, with no great expense or trouble, to rear the plants native to either extremities of this country. We have a soil which, though light, is warm and kindly, and readily submits to the labor of the husbandman. We have sheltered valleys, where the fierce north wind is denied approach j and we have low lands bordering on our river, where the winter is sooner com pelled to dissolve his icy fetters, and release the struggling germ from his grasp, than is common to the more elevated ta ble-lands westward. Our vegetation, therefore, is earlier, and more easily protected, immediately in this vicinity, than al most on any other spot lying along the same parallel of lati tude. These causes have operated to give us good gardens. They have been greatly assisted, in fact, we may say, these advantages were first shown to us, by the French emigrants from St. Domingo, who, some thirty years gone by, were exiled by the domestic troubles of that island, and who fortunately selected this city as their asylum. That useful and worthy class of refugees brought with them an invaluable gift to our people the knowledge of plants and garden stuffs. They were a frugal and industrious race of men, whose calm and philosophic resignation to misfortune taught us a moral lesson scarcely less valuable than the physical boon with which it was accompanied. Many of them had been affluent, had lived in HORTICULTURAL. 33 the abundance of their tropical climate, and, in accordance with the simple and healthful habits of their nation, had accu rately studied all the processes of horticulture, and drawn theii chief luxuries from that pursuit. They had been despoiled oi their wealth ; their homes were subverted ; and, with the few household relics which haste allowed them to snatch up, they fled before the pursuing war, and reached our shores in safety. On their arrival here, they soon became aware of the value of this position for gardens j and many persons, now within my hearing, will doubtless remember the rapid improvement which took place in the supply of our markets. Almost immediately from the date of this event, Baltimore became distinguished, for the profusion and excellence of the fruits and vegetables which supplied her tables. Since that period each coming year has added some new bounty to this valuable resource : our gardens. multiply to the full measure of our increasing de mand : new plants have been introduced ; and an eager emu lation has been active to furnish these healthful stores of com fort in the richest variety, and largest abundance. The poor emigrant has past to the tomb : his generation have become mingled in the mass of our citizens : his humble name may even now be forgotten : but his great and priceless gift sur vives as a monument of his usefulness, which, although it may not have the glory of the storied urn, nor the splendor of the sculptured column no, nor the tribute of the deathless page to make it intelligible to posterity, has, nevertheless, an equal ly honorable^ claim to the respect of the wise and the good, as a perpetual though silent benefaction to the country. It is not long since an Agricultural society was established in this State. Its chief object was to promote inquiry and in crease of knowledge, in reference to the more extensive con cerns of farming. It looked to the production of the crops of grain, the cultivation of grasses, and the improvement of the breed of cattle in fact, generally to the augmentation of the wealth of the husbandman. I recall this society to mind, that I may appeal to the experience of all who have attended 34 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. to the impression it has made, for proof of the value of such as sociations. Our farmers in general are a highly intelligent race of men ; skilled in their particular pursuit, and careful of their own interest, and may be said to have possessed the means of improvement and the disposition to use them, with out the aid of societies, as largely as any class of men in any country. Yet it requires no closeness of observation to see how much agriculture has been improved by the labors of this society ; what emulation has sprung up to enlighten those who are ignorant, and to extend the field of knowledge for the learned ; what valuable additions have been made to the im plements of husbandry ; what incalculable benefits have been conferred upon the country by the importation of new stocks of cattle ; and, above all, I mention it because the youngest individual in this hall may recognize the facty what signal advantages we all have enjoyed in the increased abundance and excellence which has been given to the products of the dairy. It is a pleasant thing to compare the present day with the day that is gone. It is pleasant to live in a country whose condi tion is ever on the rise ; and to see our neighbors, kindred and friends, day by day, growing more comfortable, contented and affluent ; to witness the nation growing rich in the substantial blessings of life ; the rich man of yesterday made richer to-day, and the poor man of an early date brought to the convenien ces and comforts of the opulent. It is pleasant to see how marvellously luxuries have grown cheap by the invention and skill of man ; and things that were deemed superfluous in one age, converted, by the general elevation of society, into the common necessaries of the next : to see that which was once the peculium of the wealthy, by the magic of man s productive skill, brought within the reach of every industrious laborer. These things are pleasant to be thought of; and they make the heart of the patriotic man glad when he reflects that they belong to his country : they make the heart of the religious man thankful, when he remembers them as the blessings of Providence : they spread cheerfulness and content, the rich- HORTTCULTUKAL. 35 est of earthly blessings, over the whole people : they enliven the carol of the ploughman; they brace the sinews of labor, and rob toil of its fatigue : they light up the countenances of the poor ; and they make it a happy and enviable thing to the stranger to have a heritage in this land. Such may be said to be a picture of our country through the last twenty years. This has resulted, in part, from the natural increase of population and wealth, inevitably inci dent to a fruitful and peaceful territory, but in great part, also, does it result from the assiduous effort made by individuals and societies to promote the knowledge of the arts necessary to make a nation prosperous, and especially of the arts of hus bandry. The press has liberally devoted its influence to the support of this effort. Periodical papers have been ably edi ted and munificently encouraged to disseminate science far and wide ; the best pens have been employed to make this knowledge common ; the air, if I may so speak, has been fill ed with the philosophy of useful things, and men have absorb ed instruction almost unconsciously to themselves. They have caught hints from almanacs, wisdom from the fleeting sheets of a newspaper, precepts from proverbs, and good from all. In this progress upon the career of improvement our com munity have arrived at another stage. That stage is indicated by the establishment of the Horticultural Society. The culti vation of fruits, vegetables and flowers no less demands the fostering care of societies, than the larger concerns of hus bandry ; indeed, from the variety of subjects which this pursuit embraces ; from the minute character of its details ; from the comprehensive knowledge which it requires ; and more espe cially from the want of familiarity, in the great mass of our cit izens, with the endless processes of this cultivation, it would seem, more than most other pursuits, to demand the aid of in telligent societies, earnestly devoted to publishing the secrets of the knowledge upon which it depends. It invokes the as sistance not only of the practical gardener, but of the attentive 36 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. and astute naturalist ; it is concerned not only with the sub* jects to which our domestic observation has grown habituated, but looks abroad into every quarter of the earth ; it explores the treasures of every climate ; it studies the properties of every soil ; it investigates the peculiarities of every plant ; it collects the experience of every people. It is careful to make that vege tation perfect and fruitful which nature has thrown before us in a wild and rugged strength, and to which she has given the prom ise, that by the nurture of man its fruits should be made abun dant ; it is skilful, by the arts of grafting and culture, to produce new and endless varieties of species ; it is diligent to natural ize and domesticate the rare and valuable productions of distant climes ; in short, it brings into the circle of a distinct science the knowledge of interesting facts scattered far and wide over the large surface of nature The want of a society adapted to this kind of investigation would not begin to be felt until the improv ing taste of the community, guided by the laudable zeal of pub lic-spirited individuals, should take a direction towards the ele gant luxuries of the garden. That this taste is growing up among us, is abundantly manifested by the zeal with which this first cel ebration of the Maryland Horticultural Society has been sus tained ; it is displayed in the rich and rare productions which have been shown for two days past in this hall ; it is illustra ted by the lively and eager interest of the respectable and in telligent crowds who, to-day and yesterday, have mingled in this festival of flowers. There are already several such institutions on this conti nent, some of which have been in the full career of usefulness for many years past. Their impression upon the people, among whom they have been established, has invariably been beneficent ; we follow in their steps, imitate their exam ple, and aim at the same good. This society scarcely num bers, as yet, six months since its creation indeed, the pres ent occasion may be said to be its first announcement to the public and it is a cheerful and grateful subject of reflection to the patriotic gentlemen who brought it into existence, that HORTICULTURAL. 37 iieir fellow townsmen have so quickly responded to their laud able purpose, and that they have already enlisted the support of upwards of a hundred members. Their little academy promises to spring up to a quick and sturdy maturity, and to win the universal regard of every liberal and enlightened friend of useful knowledge. The design of every well-regulated Horticultural Society, is twofold. It is first, to explore and develope the useful prop erties of plants ; and, secondly, to supply the means of pro curing and multiplying the rare and beautiful vegetable pro ductions of nature. The first department is a large one. It is concerned with the nurture and distribution of that large class of fruits and vegetables, which the provident source of all good has scat tered over the face of the earth for the support of his crea tures. There is not a climate so fierce, from the inhospitable and howling wilderness of the Arctic from the far extremities " of Norumbega and the Samoed shore/ down to the " utmost Indian isle Taprobane," there is not a barren rock so cheerless, nor a strand so bleak, but that the bounty of heaven has domesticated on it some plant whose substance will furnish subsistence to the living things that there inhabit. We have brought, from far and near, into our gardens many of the choice dainties which God has bestowed upon the prolific earth : the fruits and veg etables, with which we are conversant, are but few of them native to the soil on which they grow ; the care of man has long ago visited them in their remote homes, and he has pre served the seed, and spread them, in inexhaustible abundance, over all the habitable places of the globe. By an admirable provision of nature they possess the invaluable quality of self- naturalization, and readily adapt themselves to almost every variety of climate where man himself attains his physical per- 38 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. fection. There yet sleep in the solitudes of nature many an unknown weed, whose esculent virtue the prying eye of science has not yet discovered ; they will there sleep in un disturbed obscurity, until the frequent excursions of individuals and societies, impelled by the noble ambition of unfolding these vegetable treasures to the light of day, shall invade their hiding-places, and give their humble worth its due share of the esteem of mankind. This enterprise is now busily on foot, and year after year the votaries of knowledge are enlarging their catalogue of the bounties of earth. Not less important, on the score of usefulness, are these investigations when they are directed to the search after the medicinal virtues of this vegetable creation. The pharmaco poeia of medicine is indebted to the labors of the horticulturist for its most valuable ingredients. How many a pain has been assuaged, how many a dreadful hour of suffering averted, how many a life preserved by the simple physic of the garden ! Scarcely a plant that puts forth its modest leaves beneath the hedge, nor little root that twists its fibres into the borders of the garden walk, that is not a laboratory of priceless essences, for the relief of some of the countless ills that beset humanity. The power that ordained man to be the victim of feeble ness and disease, as if compassionating his inevitable decay, and taking pity on his suffering, has garnered up in these hum ble cells innumerable specifics, for the possession of which, in his moments of agony, the proudest monarch would barter his crown. Nor is the excellence of the horticulturist s labor confined to the improvement of vegetation for food and medicine. It has much to do with the subject of affording shade and shelter to our habitations from the intense heat of the summer sky. We may learn by it how to collect and transplant trees ; what peculiar attention they require ; how their growth may be quick ened and their health preserved to make them useful where they are placed. Connected with this subject, too, is a large field of valuable inquiry into the properties and character of HORTICULTURAL. 39 cmr forest trees, with a view to the production of the best and most serviceable kinds of timber a subject which at no dis tant day will claim a large share of the attention of our coun trymen. The indiscriminate hand of the woodman has long been ruthlessly at work upon our forests, and has already de stroyed the resource of great and important wealth to the nation. The diffusion of information on these subjects, may correct the mischievous undervaluing of the glories of our groves, and preserve to future generations a possession which their expe rience will properly estimate, if ours does not. Let no one believe that these are frivolous or ignoble pur suits. They are fostered by the care, and upheld by the suf frage of the wisest and best men in all ages. The most re nowned and illustrious individuals have betaken themselves to the tilling of the earth with a peculiar sense of fresh and lively enjoyment, and in the hours of their brightest triumphs and busiest engrossment have thought of the pleasant earth and its prolific progeny, with a relish rendered keener by contract with the pursuits of their ambition. It is no mean glory to be the first discoverer of a useful vegetable ; nor is his fame to be de- pised who produces the familiar roots and plants of our gar dens in the highest state of perfection. He who succeeds in bringing into existence a turnip or a beet which will weigh ten pounds, when these roots before were not known to exceed two, and who shall teach his countrymen how to repeat the process, confers upon mankind a benefit that should entitle him to a civic crown. He who, by his zeal and research among the stores of nature, adds another wholesome and nu- tricious vegetable to the supplies of the table, as fairly wins a claim to the gratitude of his country as the man who serves her in the senate or the field. The introduction of the potato into Europe, after the discovery of America, may be almost said to have created a distinct political era. It is not long since the tomato and the egg-plant now classed among our most valued and delicious vegetables were first given to the people of this land. From whom this boon was derived, is a 40 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. fact which has shared the obscurity and oblivion common to many of the noblest benefactions to our species. Its value, however, is attested by the universal favor with which it has been received. It has been said, by some impassioned epi cure, that that man is entitled to the thanks of his country who invents a new dish. If such should be his glory, how much more signal should be the fame of the man who, by discover ing a new and savory material, should lay the foundation of twenty dishes ! who, instead of spending his genius upon an other mode of combining and concocting the already known elements of good living, carries his research into the field of unexplored aliment, and brings into the kitchen some before unheard-of, rich, flavorous and healthful nutriment. What re nown would await the gardener or the herbalist, who should succeed in transplanting to our soil, or who should discover in the mold of our forests that most boasted of all European con diments that matchless and priceless flavorer of soups, pas ties and ragouts that most catachrestical dainty, of which it glorifies a man to be able even to speak in our country, since it shows that he has had the benefit of the trans-Atlantic tour I mean the far-famed truffle ! Truly, that man s name should be well remembered ! I can imagine with what sincere affection it would be lauded by the hungry man who sat him self down, for the first time, to a repast where this rare sea- soner lent its flavor to the viands : how acute and pleasant would be the recognition of the man of nicely- adjusted palate at the same banquet : how thankfully the invalid, with sickly and sated taste, would express his sense of the benefaction when he found it reviving, stimulating and charming his jaded and capricious appetite. These, I repeat, although they con cern our sensual enjoyments and furnish appliances to our baser desires, are nevertheless no mean glories. They con tribute innocent allurements to beguile man from the knowl edge of the weariness of his earthly pilgrimage ; and they cor roborate and fortify his body by giving him health and strength, and cheerfulness and content the better to enable him to dis- HORTICULTURAL. 41 charge those higher and more noble offices which belong to his condition as a thinking, aspiring, and accountable being. To all such purposes the Horticultural Society is eminently subservient. It not only invites and persuades men to give their attention to the introduction of new vegetables ; but it also teaches how those in use, native or naturalized, may be produced in the greatest abundance, with the least labor, and at the earliest periods of the year. It studies the nature of plants, their characters, their habits, the things and conditions congenial to them, and the obstacles that embarrass their in crease. It teaches what distemperatures are incident to their growth ; what signs attend their career, whether for good or ill ; and with what profit these may be observed. In fact it builds up a beautiful system of georgics, which the philoso pher may study with delight, and the practical gardener may pursue with advantage. It furnishes a fruitful source of emol ument to the poor, and opens new fields for the employment of wealth, and a thousand new channels for the distribution of it among the laboring classes. Its purposes are good, and its means of reaching them wholesome. Such are its more im mediate useful aims. Its second design is to cultivate a taste for ornamental vege tation, and to contribute to the pleasures of the eye. I should be -wanting in my duty on the present occasion, if I did not descant upon this branch of the labors of the society. A garden is a theme of pleasant recollections to us in every stage of life. We remember, with a peculiar fondness, those days of infancy which were spent in playing through the labyrinths of the trimmed hedges of box, and where the althea, the lilac and the hawthorn, bounded the parterre, over which we struggled with heedless step and with hearts as gay as spring itself, among tulips, hyacinths and marigolds, as they clustered about our knees. The odor of the new blossom is still fresh and unforgotten in the recollection of our childish sports, when we mischievously shook the blooming fruit tree, and stood beneath the shower of its dazzling petals, in whose 42 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. fall we had thoughtlessly robbed the year of its promise. In manhood the same images visit the senses with undiminished delight. In old age they come again with their usual fresh ness j as if that love of nature, that rapturous enjoyment of her beauties, were the only sense that time could not blunt, nor use destroy. I do not envy that man who, at this season, can go forth from the city to the woods, and as he threads some winding rivulet, with its little cascades and rocky currents, can set his foot upon the modest violet, without feeling an interest in its simple history, or a pleasure at finding himself in the secret home of the wild flower. I do not think well of him who does not count himself a better man for being where nature has spread her untrimmed beauties before his eye, and poured upon his ear the gush of her fountains. He is not to my liking who cannot acknowledge to himself a new transport, when, at this fragrant and blooming time, he finds himself surrounded by the profusion of flowers which, unplanted, shoot up in every glen and on every hill side, over every field and through every grove the gay tribes of the azalea, the rich kalmias, and the perfumed sweetbriar, " Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art, In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon, Poured forth profuse, on hill and dale and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrown d the noontide bowers." To me it seems that we are affined to our mother earth by an instinct, which civilization and artificial life cannot subdue, that makes us love the green leaf and the " crisped brook." That this instinct, after years of absence and disuse, still con jures up and renews without abatement its appropriate emo tions of delight, when the objects to which it is allied recur to view ; like that mysterious sense of recognition which is said to exist in the bosom of the child who, long separated from HORTICULTURAL. 43 his parent, meets her when no knowledge of her voice and features might recall her to his memory, and who is neverthe less conscious of her presence by the inward moving of a principle within him, that speaks to his heart with an almost supernatural inspiration. I have read of the young savage taken early from his native woods and indoctrinated in all the lore of the schools, trained to the usages of civilized life, se cluded from all knowledge of his native haunts ; yet when, at manhood, he has been left to pursue the bent of his free will the first fanning of the mountain , breeze the first rustling of the forest leaf the first gush of the clear river has awak ened his dormant but indomitable instincts ; and, breaking through the sophistications of his guarded life, he has rushed wildly and in the ecstasy of his long-repressed but now regen erated impulses, to the kindred wilderness of his fathers. Such seems to me to be the nature of that quick recognition of rural beauty, which affords so much satisfaction to the heart of every well constructed man, when he finds himself remote from the populous city, and embosomed amidst the verdure of hill and valley, and shaded with the fresh leaves of spring. It is to minister to these pleasures, to enlarge their field, and to prolong their duration, that the Horticultural Society, among other things, directs its aim. The cultivation of flowers admits of almost endless research. It is wonderful to observe how much the hand of man has done to produce variety and luxuriance in every species of this vegetable creation ; and how his skill has mastered the secrets of their organic laws, and enabled him to give them new hues and shapes. Who has not seen the color imparted to the hydrangea by the change of the mold around its root ? Who has not admired the infinite varieties of the tulip, the rose, and the carnation ? Who has not contemplated with pleasant surprise the effect of cultivation in enlarging, redoubling, and expanding the structure of some of the most beautiful flowers of the garden ? The knowledge which achieves these marvels deserves regard, 44 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. not only as it furnishes us a philosophical amusement, but from the higher consideration, that it illustrates the labors of . the naturalist, and unfolds the mysteries of the operations of that universal providence which fills this world with good and beauty. There are many attributes of a moral cast belonging to the rearing of plants. These little earth-born toys, speak to us a volume of pretty histories ; they are domesticated with us, and partake of our household affections ; they are symbols of the most agreeable thoughts and sentiments ; they are con secrated by ancient custom to our amusements, our business, our fancies, our superstitions, and to our religion. He who will read the history of our race, will find that in all ages they have had curious mystical associations with our being ; they have been our oracles, our monitors, our talismans. The cre dulity of our ancestors has invested them with virtues, that suppose them to be the peculiar favorites of the invisible agents which were believed to sway the destiny of mortals ; and prescription, as hoary as our earliest tradition, has as signed to them a special function in the business of life : the laurel and the bay were supposed to be gifted with the power of parrying the thunderbolt ; and they have formed the ap propriate wreath of the hero and the poet : the ivy and the holly, the palm and the cedar, have for centuries typified to the pious and reverent mind, the mild and unfading lustre of Christianity ; and, even at this day, furnish evergreen gar lands to decorate the festivals of the church. What countless recollections, mellowed by the bland and rich light of poetry, are clustered around the little sprig of rosemary ! How does its very name conjure up the image of the wedding and its gay train, the wassail bowl, the joyous dance, and all the pomp of the festive hall ! How does it recall the Christmas carol, and the old ballad, which rehearses in simple, uncouth verse, the merry-makings of that laughing race, who, many generations back, were as intent as we are now, to cheat life of its pain, and dull the edge of the scythe of time ! The HORTICULTURAL. 45 mistletoe is scarcely less venerable in the Druid s faith, than in the respect of our immediate progenitors, who held it sacred to the service of the funeral. A mournful, yet not un- pleasing sadness hangs around the melancholy yew and cypress dedicated to the silent solitude of the tombs. In the Romish calendar, there is not a day in the year without its saint, nor a saint without a consecrated plant : even the passion of the" Saviour, by a beautiful conceit, is supposed to be recorded on the disk of a familiar garden flower, and to the religious mind serves as a memorial of the most sublime event in the annals of the human family. Then, too, this world of flowers, how does it speak to us of the fairy enchantments, and wonder-working spells of that superstition, which built up the rich and homely mythology of the gone-by time ! of the slip of rue, which could set at nought and defy the malice of the meagre hag ! of the " ver vain and the dill," that, according to the ancient couplet, had virtue to " hinder witches of their will :" of the moon wort, which, if the legends say true, could unbind that which was fast, open double-bolted locks, and even snatch the shoe from the horse that set his foot upon it ! How does it summon up to the imagination, the gorgeous and gaudy realms of Oberon and Titania, with their tiny mignons peopling the labyrinths of the rose, diving into the well of the honey-suckle, or sport ing beneath the tent-like canopy of the inverted lily ! and how remind us of that prankish sprite, who was wont to vex the household of our " idle headed eld," Robin Goodfellow, lurking, as Shakspeare has pictured him, in the cowslip s bell, and sharing in the plunder of the bee, or sleeping amidst the odorous tapestry of the jasmine and woodbine ! The whole theme is redolent with the richest essence of poesy, and de lights the mind as much by its association with the racy tales of genius, as the flowers themselves regale the senses by their forms of unmatched grace, their delicate hues or exquisite perfumes. This floral department cannot but find favor with the 46 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ladies of Baltimore : its care is peculiarly within the province of their sex, and it therefore constitutes an essential and valu able feature in the organization of the Horticultural Society, to enlist the zeal, and insure the co-operation of our towns- women, by soliciting them to become members of the Society, and to assume an active participation in its duties. Under their control, and with the aid of their spirited devotion to our purpose, we hope to communicate an impulse to the pub lic, which must speedly make this institution popular and pro ductive of the greatest good. We have already, so far found grace in their eyes, as to attract the regard of several of the most intelligent and praiseworthy individuals of the sex in our city, whose names are now enrolled upon our records, and we do not doubt that their excellent example will be promptly followed by their companions and friends. It is in the power of our fair compatriots, not only to enliven and refine the taste of this community, but to bestow a grace and a vigor upon the endeavors of this society, which, without them, it might in vain struggle to acquire. To them, therefore, we strenuously appeal for support, and trust that they will attach themselves to this institution with that ardor which forms a part of their character. Then may we expect that our festival of flowers, in each succeeding year, will be truly a banquet of delights ; where beauty shall rule the hour, and joy walk in the footsteps of usefulness; where good and pleasure shall go hand in hand, to exalt, adorn and dignify the aims of the society, and our city win a fresh chaplet of fame for its virtuous devotion to these refined and bountiful pursuits. From the sketch which I have imperfectly given of the nature and aims of this society, it will be seen that we stand in need of the commendation and support of our fellow-citizens at large, and that our organization is one which may furnish the opportunity to do much good under the most agreeable and alluring forms. We ask no personal sacrifice from any one, of time or money, which might be employed with more profit in gratifying the demands of the other relations of life. HORTICULTURAL. 4:7 We wish to give a direction to the tastes of our people, and rather train their recreations and their pastimes to pursue a channel which shall be no less fruitful in enjoyment, than theii more customary pleasures, yet, which shall, at the same time, increase the store of comfort to all. We offer to the votary of our cause an occupation that engrosses the mind with inno cent and peaceful duties ; that inspires pure thoughts, elevates and refines the heart, and raises man to a love for simple and virtuous amusements ; that infuses health and vigor into his veins ; that fills his thoughts with subjects calculated to allay the irritations of life, that exalt him to the worship and imita tion of his God. We offer him an employment that shall make him conversant with green fields, and running brooks, and balmy skies ; a pursuit that shall warm his fancy to the relish of the beauties of nature, and that shall teach him to despise the tinsel and trickery of artificial life, by the fresh perception it will give him of the luxury of the " uncased air," and of the never-sating joys of the forest and field, of the woodland slope and flowery mead ; a pursuit, of which it is its chief glory and highest praise, that " all its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace !" 48 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. AN ADDBESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, AT CHATHAM STREET CHAPEL IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, OCTOBER IT, 1833. MR. PRESIDENT, and Gentlemen of the Institute : Partaking with you in that concern for the promotion of the useful arts, which has induced the formation of this so ciety, it is with a grateful alacrity that I have repaired to this city to discharge the duty which your appointment has as signed to me ; and I would pray you to believe, that it is not in the conventional and unfelt form of speech of a common place occasion I acknowledge the unmerited honor you have conferred upon me, by the invitation which has summoned me hither. I feel proud to be accounted a fellow-laborer with you in your cause, the cause of our common country : and I am sincerely anxious, at all times, to contribute whatever may be in my power to draw upon it the earnest and favorable regard of our countrymen. Your society, gentlemen, has already won a distinguished place in the respect of the nation : it has set a noble example of intelligent devotion to the public good : it has enlisted the aid of the purest patriots : it is fortified by the possession of the most useful talents ; and it is cheered in its career by the applause of the best citizens. With such objects and means, and with such steadiness in the pursuit and employment of them, the impression which it is likely to make upon the com mon welfare, cannot but confer a lasting renown upor. this AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 49 Institute, and furnish abundant reason for self-gratulation to its members. Although I do not appear here, gentlemen, formally author ized to speak the sentiments of the population among whom I reside, yet I feel happy to be able to assure you, that you have their sympathy warmly excited in the success of your enterprise : that they hail you as comrades in the van of a glorious march ; that they admire your zeal, commend your endeavors, and send you a cheerful and hearty " God speed you" in your effort to reach the point toward which you hold your way. Coming from among a community where such feelings are rife, I can scarcely allow myself to be considered a stranger in this hall : and yet I am loth to part with a name that has brought me into the enjoyment of that hospitality which it is the characteristic virtue of this generous city to extend to those who put forward the stranger s claim. When all things else are forgotten by me, I will not forget the kindness by which I have been made to feel, that, in leaving my own home and vis iting yours, I have only changed one circle of friends for an other, not less endued with the qualities to attract esteem and take a place in the memory of the heart. I have said, gentlemen, that your cause was the cause of the country. It is conspicuously so. It is your aim to wake up the slumbering strength of this New World, and to teach the philosophy by which a young and robust nation shall mount high above all competitors in its ascent towards a durable greatness. You have planned a wise and well-ordered scheme, by which the intelligence of our country shall thoughtfully di rect the application of labor to happy and profitable results ; a scheme by which experience may be garnered up in a safe depository, and thence be administered through such channels as shall convey it to the seats of industry, and pour it forth as a wholesome nutriment to make the genius of the nation stur dy even as a great river distributed through innumerable out lets over a rich garden, irrigating the parched soil, causing 3 50 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. every germ to fructify and every plant to flourish. You are concerned in the investigation of those sources of wealth which lie below the surface of ordinary observation ; which are locked up in the secret chambers of science, or which are of so minute and subtle a nature as to escape the unlearned perception of the busy crowd around you. You stimulate new experiments by rewards ; you invite labor into paths that it has yet left unoccupied, by throwing before it the results of the efforts of other nations in the same field, and you gradually infuse into the public mind a desire to seek out the means of giving scope to all that energy which indolence or the want of knowl edge has heretofore kept without a motive to action. Such a design, skilfully pursued, is fraught with benefactions which, day by day, become more apparent in the history of the pres ent generation, and which will incalculably enhance the com fort of the next. It is no inconsiderable feature in this scheme, that it fur nishes, through the instrumentality of an annual fair, an exhi bition of the productions of American skill and industry in the various departments of mechanical employment. The in genious and enterprising classes of our fellow-citizens who are engaged in the construction of the innumerable fabrics which administer to the wants and the luxuries of society, are invited to send into your hall specimens of the several commodities with which their labor has been conversant ; an impulse is given to the desire to render this exhibition as various as possible, by the offer of honorary premiums for excellence in the most useful and important branches of handicraft ; emula tion is excited to increase the list of serviceable inventions ; and humble and retiring genius is persuasively solicited to come forward into the circle of active notoriety, and to throw in its contributions to the wealth and renown of the nation. This invitation has been met, on the present occasion, with the most commendable spirit by those to whom it was ad dressed, and the result has been what speaking from the impression made upon myself I may appropriately call a AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 51 dazzling display of the rich and rare creations of mechanical skill. In your exhibition-room, has been presented to the in spection of the eager and thronging multitude, whom zeal and curiosity have attracted to the place, an array of the prodjucts of art, of which it is not too much to affirm that, for excellence in the workmanship, beauty in the design, genius in the inven tion, or variety in the kind, may challenge competition with the works of any equal number of artisans in the most elabo rately trained and dexterous community upon the face of the globe. The eye wanders with delight over these evidences of the ingenuity of our countrymen, and the heart of every friend to the enduring welfare of this land, beats high with the inspir ing hopes which such a scene conjures up to his fancy. There are the elements of present and future glory ; there the prom ise of comfort, wealth, and enjoyment ; there the material from which, I trust, for many an age to come, the sinewy toil of a sturdy, independent, and intelligent people may earn them competence, strength, and virtue, and, through these means, continue to the world that most glorious of its em pires, a free republic unerringly converting to the best use the talents with which God has endowed it, and mastering the most hidden as well as the most open resources of a territory as exhaustless in moral and physical treasures, as it is wide in its expanse. This show is but an epitome of the vast and complicated aggregate of national work. Various, rich, and beautiful as it is, it offers specimens of scarce a tithe of the different species of crafts which occupy our busy population. The thousand branches of the great Cyclopean labor of the forges are, of necessity, but inadequately represented; the almost infinite departments of toil in the shaping of wood ; the master art employed in the building of ships ; the endless forms of ex pert joinery ; the grand and the beautiful in architecture ; the countless fabrications of the metallic and mineral stores of na ture, are all of a kind to defy their full exhibition in your hall : and the observation of all men will suggest to them that, 52 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of the diversified inventions which daily necessity provokes ; which pervade all the pathways of human use and subservien cy ; and which incessantly engross the thoughts and care of our eager and restless craftsmen, it would be vain to expect more than a faint image or symbol there : no single structure of this capacious metropolis possesses dimensions ample enough for their display. Yet such as we have seen it, this exhibition may properly be denominated a miniature of the whole, a card of samples taken from the great store-house of our country. The minute figure or impress of the whole body may be absent, but the genius that makes the mighty mass is present ; the moral essence is present ; and there may the patriot citizen take his children, and, from that volume, read them the lesson that shall teach them to be proud of their country, to love it, and, in after times, to pursue its good. I could wish that the traveller from other climes, whether his intent be " wicked or charitable " whether he come clothed with prejudice as a garment, or appear in the pure robe of philosophy, should have the fortune to witness such a scene as has fallen under our eyes ; it would teach him that the glory of America is not to be measured by the finical pre tensions of the drawing-room, nor by "the custom of convivial ity at the table, nor yet by the scale of comfort and accommo dation at the inn ; but chiefly, and most adequately, by the great intrinsic vigor of our working people, and by that incal culably elastic spring that heaves up the inward vital power to the surface, and transmutes the gross elements of earth into things of value ; that makes the poor man the being only of a season, the rich man the sure inheritor of increasing luxuries, and the whole nation the abode of happy and pros pering citizens. It will not be out of place, nor unexpected on an occasion like this, to inquire what has given existence to these multi tudinous products of the work of hands : whether they have sprung from the mere natural and unsolicited impulses of our population, or, on the contrary, have been called into being AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 53 by a course of nurture on the part of the government ? Wheth er they are objects worthy to be cherished by legislative care, or owe their prosperity to a system of partial policy which, while it may enrich a small portion of our fellow-citizens, does so only by the impoverishment of the great majority, or indeed of any part, of the nation ? Whether it is wholesome in the administration of the concerns of our country to establish, pro tect, and preserve a capacity and an interest to follow these pursuits, or, on the other hand, to leave them to the unaided instinct which belongs to thrift, and to the tendency of indi vidual effort to employ itself upon the most profitable enter prise ? These are questions of serious import, and have long oc cupied the best minds both in the country and abroad. They relate to the welfare of the whole State,* and concern the pres ent race of Americans as deeply as any topics affecting their national destiny yet not less deeply than they concern all after generations in this republic. It is my purpose to claim your attention to these questions : the time and place are appropriate to the inquiry, and the subject itself derives light from every endeavor to carry it into the reflections of our people. I promise myself and the cause the advantage, at least, of once more engaging you to employ your minds in its investigation. t It is now about ten years since the legislature of the Union gave its first indication of a settled purpose to incorporate into the public policy that system of measures regarding the ex pansion and support of domestic industry, which has since been the cause of so much excitement throughout this country. The thoughts of the people of the United States had, for some years previous, been tending to this point, and some laws re ferring to it, which were rather the forecast shadows of the system than the adoption of the system itself, had, it is true, been passed by Congress j but until the period to which I .have referred, it could scarcely be said that this code for the maintenance of domestic labor was resolved upon as a per- 54: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. manent measure of legislation. Accordingly, in the year 1824, a decisive tariff law, constructed with a view to the encourage ment and protection of hom e manufactures against foreign competition, after full and free discussion, was enrolled in the statute-book. It is well to pause at intervals, and look back upon our career, that we may compare fact with philosophy, perform ance with promise. He who does so upon the last ten years, will find much to occupy his thoughts and instruct his mind. I will not pretend to draw even an outline of this survey as it strikes my view : time would not serve me to array the vicis situdes of opinion and the developments of history that belong to such a labor ; but I will ask you to note the most promi nent feature in the whole picture, and almost the only one which, throughout that period, has been without variation, I mean the steady, onward march of the nation from one stage of good fortune to another ; its career upon a plain of contin ued elevation. I would ask you to mark, too, the enchanting prospect from its present height. You will look over a land scape gilded with the purest sunshine, and smiling in an at mosphere redolent with fragrance : you will see how content has shed its balm upon the people ; and how healthfully labor has walked to its toil. You will hear the frequent stroke of the woodman s axe, sending its dull echo through the frontier forest j and perceive the rich uncovered earth turned up to the sun, over many a former waste and distant wild. You will find huts grown into comfortable homes, hamlets into villages, villages into cities, and cities, into great and gorgeous marts. Canals and roads may be seen stretching forth their serpent lines into the bosom of the remote valleys : fossils, more rich than gold, will be found to have been dug up in abundance from the dark chambers of a thousand mines : the smoke of unnumbered furnaces will be discerned rising above the screen of the great wilderness ; flocks infinite will be seen whitening the summits of the interior hills ; and, on the Atlantic, com merce redoubling her busy fleets. The sound of the hammer, AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 55 the din of the shuttle, and the clamor of the mill have. made the universal air vocal ; and everywhere the incessant mur mur and gush of business tells of a generation intent upon aggrandizing a vast and scattered empire, which now, like a strong man, "walks on its way rejoicing." This is the picture afforded by the retrospect often years, and its hues are the more brilliant because they are warmed (to use the painter s phrase) by their contrast with the scene pre sented in the previous interval of the same duration. Of that interval, embracing the space from the conclusion of the war until the era of the tariff, but a melancholy account can be ren dered. Its unhappy prominent points may be shortly enu merated in a concise story of disappointed hopes and fruitless endeavor. It began with a hollow and unreal show of vigor in trade ; an unnatural animation pervaded the departments of enterprise, more like the quickly exhausting fire of a fever than the wholesome glow of health ; and the end was marked by deep disaster and pervading bankruptcy. Between these extremes we successively saw the evils of a depreciated cur rency, a sated commerce and an overthrown industry. Our sturdiest population mourned their fate in sackcloth and ashes, and our best and most active citizens were whelmed in all the horrors of poverty. A philosophical statesman would dwell with intense inter est upon these pictures, and he would ask what wrought that - marvellous change which made the first so beautiful? The re ply would be, that necessity is the parent of wisdom, and na tional instinct is not less strong than individual : want and pri vation are not the categories in which man is likely to repose j the restless desire to attain to good will make him astute in his perception, active and incessant in his toil ; and the pres sure of difficulty, better than all other masters, will teach him the true philosophy. These were the influences that produced the change, and the infallibility of their action was signally manifested in the sagacity with which the American people be took themselves to the most certain, and perhaps the only cure 56 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. for the evils that encompassed them, the adoption, namely, of the American System. At the period of the adoption of this system, the reflecting portion of the citizens of the United States were divided by two theories in regard to the promotion and preservation of domestic prosperity ; and time, although it may have softened the asperity of the collisions of opinion, has even yet failed to produce unanimity : many acute and learned minds are still to be found in the ranks of both. I allude to the advocates of the commercial system, or, as it is more familiarly known, the free trade theory on the one hand, and to those, on the other, who defend the policy which supposes it wise to encourage and promote domestic industry by restraints upon importation. The majority of the nation coincided with the latter ; and we may indulge the hope, that, as experience grows apace, and passion subsides ; as the fell spirit of party is lulled asleep, and good men, on either side, cultivate a conciliatory temper towards each other, the day is not far off when we shall " In mutual, well-beseeming ranks, March all one way." So far, indeed, is that happy anticipation now realized, that we may discuss the topic with reciprocal good will, and express our several opinions, free from the dread of personal exasperation or unkind surmise. The free trade theory is of modern origin. It dates no further back than the middle of the last century, and from that time until the present it has been, in the land of its birth, a mere speculation. It is profitable to study its history and character among those to whom it owes its existence. I hope, by such an examination, to show that it is misunderstood in our country, and is quite inapplicable to our circumstances. In Great Britain and in France, where the discussion of this doctrine has been most animated, it owes its popularity to a condition of things of which we have no parallel. In the first of those nations, especially (and in a not much inferior AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 57 degree in the latter), the whole machinery of municipal organ ization is curiously artificial. Government is complicated by an elaborate division of ranks and orders, which hold antago nist positions to each other, rendering the lower portions painfully subservient to the interests of the upper. Wealth is there distributed rather in lakes than rivers, and these large reservoirs are perpetually attracting to themselves the smaller accumulations, gathering " Their sum of more To that which had too much." Taxes, without stint, the price of all their power, bear with a grievous weight upon the body of the community, and the constant strife has been each man to shift them from himself upon his neighbor, like an uneasy burden, which, in this world, the crafty ever compel the weak and foolish to bear. In this struggle, power and wealth have gained the victory ; and the huge machine has become, at last, a marvellous piece of intricate joinery, whose springs are so ingeniously contrived as to throw its weight upon the inferior masses, while, from the implicitness of the mechanism, none but the eye of a skil ful master could perceive the series of actions by which this result is obtained. Such an eye was found in the acute and accomplished political economists both of England and France, when they came forth to denounce the injustice of the ancient systems of internal government. They saw in the monopolies ariU exclusive privileges which belonged to every guild; in the restraints that broke up or averted all competi tion in labor ; and in the vicious circle of secret taxation, the hateful principle which gave permanency to vested wealth at the expense of all liberal enterprise. It was, in their view, nothing better than a contention on the part of the rich to increase their store, by entailing the curse of perpetual pov erty on all the rest. It was, emphatically, a struggle to pre serve prescriptive immunities from the encroachments of the large mass of the laboring classes. And hence arose that 3* 58 OCCASIONAL ADDEES8ES. war of opinion which has so long raged in these nations between the two orders of the State. The assailing party called theirs the cause of free trade ; while those on the de fence were denominated the advocates of restriction. We may stop here to inquire, what was the aim of those who displayed the banner of free trade ? Was it to shut up the workshops, dismiss the laborer from his loom, and send him to the tillage of the earth ? to destroy the manufactories, and arrest, at once, all the branches of mechanical occupa tion ? or was it to render this species of employment more profitable to the workman who gained his bread by it ? to give him a better demand for his products, and better recom pense for the fabrication of them ? These queries are fully answered by one of the most profound and thoughtful of the statesmen of Great Britain, himself an authoritative leader in the van of the cause of free trade I mean the late Mr. Hus- kisson, to whose memory it is due to say (and it may be said with less suspicion of interested panegyric on this side of the Atlantic), that no man understood the question better, or moved towards the accomplishment of his country s glory with a more erect, earnest, or learned spirit. I wish the occasion allowed me time to make good what I am about to say, by reading extracts from that gentleman s frequent speeches upon these questions in parliament. I invoke your study of these speeches : to my apprehension they are full of political wisdom and salutary thought. His free trade, with little abatement, is our system of duties : his doctrines, allowing*for the differ ence of the condition of the two nations, are the doctrines we teach ; and had it been his lot to have been an American citi zen, he must, in accordance with his own fundamental prin ciples, have been the friend of our domestic industry. We are to judge of theories not by the detail necessary to develop them, for that will vary with times and places, but by the great results at which they aim. The theory of this British champion of free trade, as I read and understand it, is to maintain, encourage, and protect, without compromise or res- AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 59 ervation, to their fullest extent and amplest expansion, every manufacture of Great Britain for which that nation has a ca pacity ; emphatically to protect them by duties that shall exclude foreign competition, without reference to the cheapness of supply at home. That sentiment breathes in every speech, is uppermost in every argument, and has taken the deepest hold, of all others, upon his public affections. And if, from other considerations, it fell into his plan to reduce the duties to a lower standard, it certainly never entered into his imagi nation to bring them below the point of ample protection to the staple labor of the nation, or to run the slightest hazard of destroying any prosperous manufacture. How far such a scope of policy falls within the comprehension of the friends of free trade in the United States, I leave you to judge. It would indeed be an experiment of curious interest, to examine an intelligent advocate of the commercial system in England, upon the practical aim of his doctrine. I would imagine a case for such a man, and propound a question to him, from the answer to which I should hope to obtain a valu able illustration of his -theory. " Let us suppose," I would ask, " that by some recent and extraordinary secret of art, America should be enabled to manufacture broadcloths, cot ton and hardware, at two-thirds of the cost for which they could be produced in Manchester and Birmingham, does your doctrine of free trade require that, in such a case, you should allow the people of the United States to furnish you with these commodities ?" I think he would answer (I am sure the statesman to whom I have alluded would have so answered), " our free trade does not contemplate the idea of having the home market supplied by foreigners : we have v an anxious solicitude to preserve our own industry. You must not conclude because we have reduced the duties on cotton goods to ten per cent., on woollens to fifteen, and on linens to twenty-five, that it was our purpose to let in foreign importa tions. These rates were adopted under a conviction that they would amply protect our manufacture, while they would also 60 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. guard it against deterioration : they serve to admonish our ar tisans of the necessity of care and skill in their employments. In no event could we consent to discharge these people from their present occupations. If we did so we could give them no other employment. Even if our agriculture were not al ready over-supplied with labor, this population could not readily betake themselves to it, for want of knowledge of such affairs. Their only recourse would be in emigration to Amer ica, where, most probably (unless the people were led astray by their notions of free trade,) they would be invited to set up vast rival establishments that would soon deprive us of all hope of regaining our lost ascendancy in commerce. Free trade, with us, is principally concerned in removing certain cumbersome restraints, which for centuries past have been growing up in the internal organization of our society, and now impede the full expansion of domestic labor. As to that part of it which belongs to foreign commerce, we are seated too firmly upon our immense piles of capital, and have too much confidence in our long-established skill in the arts, to be afraid of any foreign rivalry ; our faith in this position, however, would be changed by . the extraordinary, and, what we deem, impossible accident imagined in your proposition. We should, of course, in such a contingency, raise the duties to a higher standard." If this should be the answer of the friend of free trade in Great Britain, wherein does it differ in principle from the doctrine upheld by the advocate of domestic industry in America ? and how widely does it depart from the purpose contemplated by those who are for abolishing our duties ! Yet, notwithstanding this essential difference in the relations of the two countries, the free trade theory, at one time, had acquired a degree of favor in the United States, that would probably have excited some surprise abroad, if its application here had been well understood. There were many extrinsic circumstances to give it popularity, and render this tendency of opinion natural to our citizens. The free trade advocates in AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 61 England and France are identified with the leaders of popular reform ; theirs is supposed to be the liberal side : they make war against ancient abuses : their principles are whig princi ples : they are the assailants of old and entrenched errors with which are associated, in our minds, all that is distasteful in monarchy ; and it is natural, therefore, that the citizens of the United States should find their sympathies enlisted in favor of this party. We constitutionally feel ourselves in clined to applaud the effort they are making, and thus are easily led to adopt the idea that the like system must produce the like result when exhibited in action at home. A more careful examination would show us, that while we partake of and encourage the same liberal concern for the interests of the industrious classes here, we are but little likely to promote their welfare by similar laws. The best theories of political economy are those which are formed upon an experience of facts ; the wider, the older, the more minute this experience, the nearer the approach to certainty. Of all nations now existing, to none is this con dition so necessary as to the United States. No community has ever before grown up under the same circumstances ; none ever was exposed to the influence of such contingencies ; none has ever marched forward, at the same pace, through such diversified chances ; to none, therefore, is it so utterly unsafe to apply, without qualification, the theories which have been founded on the experience of European nations. It is common to say that the schoolmaster is abroad ; by which figure the idea is succinctly expressed, that men are more intent than formerly upon the improvement of the arts of life. The moral and physical qualities of mankind are more diffusively developed, and the light begins to fall upon the great mass. Science may not tower more high, nor ge nius, like the eagle in "the pride of place," hold a less solitary or sublime eminence ; but the sun and the rain of useful knowledge, that make the moral world fruitful, and generate the stock of household virtues, shine and fall through a wider 62 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. atmosphere : they visit the by-places and secret corners, and vivify the good seed within humbler enclosures than they \vere used to do of old. The world no longer creeps upon its way by slow and lazy steps, some half century apart, but, like an impatient courser, bounds towards its goal. It leaps from experiment to experiment with hot haste, as if time were too short and eternity too near. Science is made popu lar and common, and all classes seem to be busy to discard the old machinery for the new. A peace of unusual duration throughout Christendom, has assisted this process, and ren dered the competition universal, eager, and intense. Just at such an era has it been the fortune of the United States, with scant forty years upon their annals, to be thrown upon their own resources. The peace of Europe had robbed us of the golden egg which our neutrality had yearly hatched ; and the war which terminated in 1814 had left us as all wars are apt to leave both victor and vanquished with nothing but our honor. In such a plight were we, for the first time, thrown upon our own resources, and called upon to play the game of nations. The arts we followed, and the prize we aimed at, were the arts and the prize also of Great Britain, a stupendous power, of infinite wealth and long practised dexterity. England was unavoidably our rival ; and, whether we would or no, it was our destiny to enter the lists with this giant, who, like him of old, bore a spear whose staff was as a weaver s beam, and stood in panoply, ready to encounter the young champion that came simply with his pebbles from the brook. The control which Great Britain possessed over capital, population and skill in the arts, confessedly placed her far above us in the means of sustaining the competition. It was in this relative condition of the two parties that the doctrines of free trade were so clamorously inculcated on the other side of the Atlantic. England had her manufactories estab lished, and was then supplying a large portion of the world : she feared no inroad upon her domestic market, and her AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 63 policy was to open all foreign ones to her trade. In no event could she be a loser by the policy ; in many particulars she had much to gain. A reciprocal reduction of duties upon the manufactured fabrics, would be but a harmless measure to her ; it would be thorough annihilation of manufactures with us. She had every motive of self-interest to impel her to urge this measure upon foreign nations. There were, in deed, some few branches of her industry, of minor importance, which she had previously attempted to build up, though evi dently disqualified by climate and position to maintain them : an enlightened restrictive system does not pretend to fos ter pursuits incompatible with the capacities of the nation. Of this nature was the process of throwing silk ; a process manifestly unsuitable to the geographical position of England, and therefore hurtful to the silk weavers. The thrown silk was, to a certain extent, a raw material, which, for the in terest of the larger manufacture of the woven fabric, it was better to import from France and Italy. The duties, there fore, were reduced upon this article, and, what is remarkable as an evidence of the supreme care of Great Britain for her domestic industry, amidst all this profession of free trade, the throwsters were compensated by the government for the de struction of their business. Such reforms were introduced with the intent, as I have before expressed it, to give the greatest attainable vigor to her home labor ; to set up and corroborate her manufactures, rather than to pull them down ; and to get rid of every useless restraint that bore upon the working classes. It was like the preparations of an expert seaman, making ready his ship for battle : the unserviceable lumber and dead weights were thrown overboard, and the crew rendered more efficient by lightening {he bulk. Such was the practical exposition of English free trade, as we read it in the measures of the party who maintain it. What was our condition at the commencement of this struggle ? We had followed the pursuits of agriculture and commerce. For many years it so happened, owing to the 64- OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. influence of extraordinary causes, that our agriculture was profitable, and our commerce, therefore, prosperous. But the causes had now been removed, and both of these concerns began to decline. Foreign ports were better supplied from other quarters, and were now shut against us : agriculture was overburdened by redundant crops that could find no market : commerce was paralyzed by the drying up of the spring from which it derived its supply. The wealth of our soil rotted on the field where it grew : the working classes could find no wages ; enterprise was disheartened : if it at tempted to enter the field of mechanical labor, it had no skill, or if it had skill, it was certain to find a foreign manu facture in the market before it at a less price : it wanted en couragement from the government, and protection to insure it a recompense. It had no protection, and therefore it was afraid to venture. All through our system there was a hor rid atrophy a dull stagnation of the fluids. In our distress we looked to the example of England ; changed our policy ; betook ourselves to protected manufactures ; and in that pur suit speedily found relief. It is somewhat strange that, after this course of experience, the advocates of free trade should still insist that whatever ap pearance of prosperity there may be in the land, it is either illusory, or exists in despite of improvident legislation ; and that they should now tell us all this manufacturing industry ought to be pulled down, and the country restored to a state of trade dependent singly upon the exchange of the fruits of husbandry for the fabrics of foreign nations. It is still more strange that they should call that course of labor free, which is constricted by foreign rivalry into one poor, unprofitable, path, from which it dare not depart without utter ruin, and yet which it can only pursue through all the embarrassments of an overloaded and unrequited competition at home a path way clogged up with the unconsumed and unconsumable fruits of the earth. Labor never became truly free until the provi dent arm of the government lifted the weight from its shoul- AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 65 ders that pressed it to the dust, and gave it space to expand and travel through all the ways and passages of an infinitely intersected nation. I would like to engage your attention a little longer with the object and philosophy of free trade, as it is professed in this country. Its first purpose is to break up the manufactur ing system. Let us suppose it successful ; it has then a dog ma to the following effect : " Although the manufactures are broken up, labor will gain by the change, because it has now the choice of a pursuit more congenial to it the cultivation of the .earth." I will say nothing of the freedom of a choice without an alternative, but I will remark that agriculture may become overstocked and grow unprofitable ; and, as this can not be denied, I will inquire what, in that case, free trade pre scribes ? " You may then," reply our opponents, " go to man ufactures : it is the natural impulse of labor, when one pursuit is rendered unprofitable by too much competition, to betake itself to another which offers a better reward." I will imagine that we have taken this advice, and have determined upon erecting manufactories because agriculture has ceased to make a valuable return for the labor employed upon it. First, it is obvious that we must have been reduced to a great deal of suffering before we could have brought ourselves to abandon the paternal acres : Secondly, we have to set about the educa tion of a new generation of mechanics, and to teach them the difficult arts of handicraft, under all the disadvantages of hav ing but few instructers, and an intricate lesson to learn : and, lastly, we have expensive establishments to build. We ac cordingly sell our farms at low prices, construct workshops and manufactories, import foreign artisans to teach our own, exhaust capital and credit in the undertaking, and, perhaps, in some three or four years, find ourselves ready to furnish the market with a commodity that shall be as cheap as the im ported one. Just at this stage of our adventure we make an important discovery. It is this : that up to this period the, imported fabric, similar to our domestic one, has heretofore 66 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. been sold to the country at some fifty or hundred per cent, above its cost of production ; and that the same is now offered twenty per cent, below the price that we require for our in demnification. Ascribing this fact, perhaps, to some tempo rary accident, we reduce wages and other expenses, and, fore going our own profit, we diminish our price correspondently to that of the rival fabric. Straightway the foreign production comes down another twenty per cent., and another, if necessa ry, and we are now convinced that this abatement of price is to be regulated by the energy of our competition ; until in de spair, with the horrors of bankruptcy before us, and the clamor of our disappointed artifices ringing in our ears, we are com pelled to stop our work. All that we have gained by this un lucky experiment is the satisfaction of having furnished our own people a touchstone by which they may ascertain how much the foreign manufacturer has heretofore been extorting from the American consumer in the shape of large profits upon his merchandise. When matters have arrived at this ebb, we have recourse again to the advocate of free trade, that we may learn from him what remedy he proposes for the disaster we have suffered ; thinking, perhaps, that he may recommend, what we are now prepared to believe a very obvious relief, a duty, on the part of the government, sufficient to keep the foreign article on a level with the domestic. This, however, he does not grant us it is against his creed ; but, in place of it, he gives us an apothegm, " that that manufacture which is not able to support itself is not worth protecting by duty ; and that which is, does not require it." From this we conclude it is his opinion that we have gone to the wrong manufacture ; and as we inform him that all our neighbors are in the same predicament, it is now his council that we had all better go back to farming. We consequently dismiss our workmen, and send them back to the plough, and to the labor of felling the wilderness ; where, at least, they will have enough to eat, and where, if they find they have but little to wear, it will be at tended with the consolation that the fashion of the forest does AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 67 not require much foppery, and that every man s neighbor is about as poor as himself. We have now made our circuit, ending where we began ; and upon casting up our account we find that we have travelled round this conjuring zodiac, leav ing an item of wealth behind us at each sign we passed through, and have come out at the starting-point completely stripped of all worldly possessions gainers only in our knowl edge of the experimental philosophy of free trade, and that " it is better to bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of." It is a point, however, much insisted upon, in recommen dation of the free trade doctrine, that it furnishes the nation with its supplies of merchandise at much less cost than the domestic manufacture ; and this fact is considered of suffi cient importance to justify the abandonment of the opposite policy. I will not affirm that, in any given branch of manufacture, we can furnish the fabric cheaper than the foreign manufac turer could do, though such an assertion would be, doubt less, sustained, in regard to a large number of our products, but I do affirm that our manufacture renders the foreign one cheaper; and that we get what we require at a much re duced price, by reason of the presence of our own workshops. It is not necessary to my present purpose that I should stop to discuss this principle ; my object is to advance another prop osition of far more importance, namely : that it is worthy of but little consideration, in the estimate of the value of our domestic system, whether the necessaries of life are rendered cheaper or dearer ; the country, we say, is benefited to an incalculable extent, by being made the theatre of manufac tures. If it were true, as it has been affirmed by the opponents of the present policy of the government (which, nevertheless, we deny), that the duties levied for the encouragement and pro tection of our own labor were an actual tax upon the people, to the full amount of the excess above the ordinary demand 68 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. for revenue, still the nation at large derives such advantages from the system as to vindicate the expediency of the tax. If, of the twenty millions raised in revenue, one half, or even the whole, were a tax of protection, it. is an inconsiderable burden when compared with the wealth it creates and scatters over the land. It may be said, that of the nine millions of free inhabitants of the United States at least four millions, including both sexes, owe their livelihood, in whole or in part, to the work of their hands, and, in some shape or other, receive wages for their labor. The presence of manufactures has had the ten dency, as all men admit and as the history of the country proves, to raise the wages of labor. It is setting it down at a low es timate much, in my judgment below the fact to compute this increase of wages upon the whole mass of labor, agricul tural as well as mechanical, at an average of six cents a day. Yet this sum would give an amount of seventy-two millions of dollars a year of increased wages, distributed among the work ing people of the United States by the operation of the domes tic system ; thus adding immediately to their comforts, and the improvement of their condition. Far beyond this money computation is the nation benefited in other forms : a large number of idle hands are provided with employment ; new fabrics, before unknown in our list of conveniences and luxu ries, are brought into existence, and introduced to common use ; industrious and thrifty habits are inculcated ; the morals of the people are elevated ; education diffused ; trade and commerce greatly extended, both by the vast accumulation of commodities for exportation, and by the capacity for a higher scale of living, and for the consumption of a greater amount of foreign productions communicated to the laboring popula tion : a thousand new springs of wealth are set in motion, that swell up the sum of national prosperity much beyond our pow ers of calculation. Value is given to the productions of the forest, the field, and the mine, on our remotest frontier : in ternal improvements necessary to facilitate the carriage of AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 69 these productions to market, are rapidly extended, with instant remuneration for the cost of construction. The hunter, ac customed to waste half of his life in idleness upon the sunny hill-side, or to gather a precarious and scanty support from the desultory pursuit of game, is converted into a feeder of sheep, or the proprietor of a thriving mill ; our most distant popula : tion are linked together by the bonds of internal commerce ; the common inheritance of American citizens is rendered more valuable by the vast increase of towns, roads, public works, fortifications, and navies ; and, dearer than all, our UNION is corroborated, cherished, and perpetuated in the affections and the interests of the people. All this is achieved by a tax (if our opponents will have it so), of some ten or twenty mil lions of dollars. Surely never was tax so recommended and consecrated by the virtue of its purpose ! It is obviously no answer to this argument to say that the seventy-two millions given in increased wages are still a bur den upon the rest of the community ; for, in regard to that sum, no consumer pays it without getting an equivalent in the immediate article he purchases : and it will also be observed that the mass of consumers is made up, in great part, by the workmen themselves. Free trade would have us relinquish all these advantages. It would drive us to the meagre resort of household manufac ture, and to the labors of the field : or it would compel that industrious, vigorous, and stirring population, who now inhabit the northern, western, and middle sections of this Union, to crowd into the pursuits of southern agriculture, until that re gion was also overstocked with labor and suffered the same plethora of production which heretofore befel the grain-grow ing States. It would dry up the sources of all prosperity but these, and the scant commerce that would be employed in the only export trade it left us. In a brief space, it would no less surely destroy the profits of planting and the foreign com merce that depended upon them ; until late, and after a long interval of decline, it inevitably and irresistibly ended in the 70 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES adoption of a system of restriction, the only permanent re source of this country. It is not wonderful that a theory which so ill-supplies the emergency of the times, should be rejected by the majority of our people especially, by the laboring majority : nor is it to be expected that, with the results of the opposite system be fore their eyes, the nation would soon consent to forego the evident advantages they derive from it. However much cap tivated by the seeming liberality and reasonableness of free trade many intelligent citizens of this country may have been, while the subject was yet new and unaided by experience, it has lost its lustre and its fascination now. The public mind has been called to regard the peculiar position of the nation in reference to this subject, and it has observed how singularly the system, as applied here, has cheated us of the blessings it promised abroad ; that public mind has, therefore, turned with a steady and rapid momentum into the adverse current, which, we may assuredly believe, no future state of things will ever long disturb. Our country is a country of busy men. Whatever gives facility and expansion to labor, benefits every class of the community. Unlike the European States, we have no piles of hoarded wealth destined to be transmitted in mass to our posterity. Opulence, among us, is a gilded pyramid that stands upon a pedestal of ice, and its foundations are perpet ually melting in the sun : the stream that flows from them may fertilize the land, and may spread bloom and beauty over barren places ; but the pyramid itself falls in its appointed time, to be built up again by other hands and to adorn other sites. Our laws, which forbid the accumulations of hereditary treasure, have reiterated to the American citizen that " sad sentence of an ancient date," that, "like an emmet he must ever moil," and they have promised to labor fulness of honors. In providing, therefore, for the prosperity of indus try, we but hew out for ourselves and our posterity a better and more auspicious destiny. The stranger who comes to AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 71 spy into our land, comes- but ill furnished to read the deep spirit of our institutions, and to see the workings of our polit ical mechanism, if he have no eye but for the conventional refinement of exclusive and aristocratic society. To him all things will seem vulgar, and it will be so written in his diary. But if he would learn what makes us a peculiar people ; what gives us strength and efficacy as a nation ; what makes us happy and united ; and above all, what is to make us a per manent, massive, and predominating power in the affairs of the world, he will find it in the principle that has ordained the lot of one to be the lot of all, the principle that rejects the very exclusiveness he values, and renders all observances, customs, immunities, rights and aspirations, common, or, what in his vocabulary is the same thing, vulgar. When the subject of crowned kings shall arrive at the philosophy and the temper to see these things, he will cease to report " that all is barren from Dan to Beersheba," and he will find less annoyance to his cloyed and dainty appetites as he trav erses the broad expanse of our republican empire. It is a beautiful problem to study in this country the great and immediate interest .which, as a nation, urges us to the melioration of the condition of the working classes. Every improvement which they experience is instantly national ; they are the people ; their suffrage elects, their will deter mines, their power directs and executes. Give them educa tion, competence, affluence, and straightway you give to the nation intelligence, vigor, and virtue : depress them, and you sink the national character by the first touch of the spring. The improvement of the arts in America is one of the mar vels in the history of mankind. In fifty years we have sprung up into the maturity which other nations have not found in centuries ; and in that brief time have won the honor of at tracting the jealousy and alarming the self-love of the master states of the world. Our institutions are scanned, our policy watched, our opinions measured, and our growth noted by all nations, with an eager and sleepless assiduity, that, to such of 72 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. us as are unconscious of our stature, seem scarcely commen surate with the relation we occupy in the family of mankind : we hardly persuade ourselves that such a scrutiny could be suggested by other than a frivolous malice. No small share of this consideration is derived from the energy with which our population have arisen to excellence in the arts ; and we are thereby admonished, as we value present and future re nown, to extend over this characteristic endowment our most cautious and friendly solicitude. It is not too much to say that the preservation of this character depends, in a very important degree, upon the policy of our government. It is a fatal error to believe that the in terests of the community are always best consulted when left to the unassisted suggestions and instincts of individual fore sight. It is unmeaning cant nay, worse it is pernicious heresy to defend what is called the " let-us-alone" policy in the affairs of nations. Individual astuteness may be a safe guide in individual concerns ; but it will never shape or con trol the circumstances of the state ; nor will it ever select, because it has neither the insight, nor the power for such selection the series of predicaments most opportune to the employment of personal capacities. The great connections of public affairs are only to be managed by state policy ; and it must ever be a question of grave debate what scheme of policy, in every case, is best adapted to the display of the inherent and appropriate vigor of the individuals who com pose the state. Man confined in a prison may safely be trusted to his instincts to make the best of his condition ; but the question of his release or further confinement will be de termined by the power above him : so, in regard to the nar row circle in which he works in society, that may be ex panded or diversified by the care of his rulers. All govern ment is instituted for the consideration of such questions : it is provided with powers to sway individual appetencies, to suppress such as are hurtful, to furnish occasion for such as are good, to remove obstacles that stand in the way of hap- AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 73 piness, and to invent or contrive relations which shall give the amplest scope to the successful exercise of the useful faculties. This is accomplished by protecting that which is weak or immature ; defending that which is valuable ; enlarg ing that which is confined, when its tendency is good, and sup pressing that which is mischievous. It was under a conviction of the efficacy of these princi ples that the majority of the American people called for legislative aid against the evils which befel them some twelve or fourteen years ago. They said to the government, " Let domestic industry thrive ; and give it room to thrive, by taking off from it that dead weight of foreign competition which disables enterprise, and turns all our currents of action into one straitened and unfruitful channel!" This fiat pro duced the system of restriction upon the importation of all such commodities as it was supposed we had a capacity to manufacture at home. The merits of this system, even now, after trial, have, in certain portions of our union, been doubted, denied, and condemned. Its opponents, however, I believe, nowhere refuse to admit that, to the large numerical majority of the people of the United States, it has brought the good it promised. The objection to it is founded mainly on the con sideration that it does not act with the same propitious influ ence upon that industry which is concerned in planting. I certainly do not mean now, after the ample discussion which this question has received from the best informed minds of our country, to repeat the arguments with which this objection has been met and refuted. I might find abundant facts to sustain these arguments in the late experience of the dissent ing portion of our population themselves : I might, in this experience, confirm and fortify all that has been advanced in favor of the domestic system : I might demonstrate the fal lacy of the proposition that the prosperity of a large majority of the nation can ever be a partial prosperity, or operate to the real injury of the minority : I might show that, in no one instance, have the predictions of the friends of free trade, in 4 74 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. reference to the pretended evils which our system was to en tail upon the nation, been verified ; and, on the contrary, that all the good, and more, that was predicated of the system, by its advocates, have been realized in the short epoch of its trial ; all this I might do, but I should feel it to be, at this day and in the presence of this Institute, a supererogatory labor ; the subject has been better handled by more compe tent advocates. I will, however, ask you to indulge me, before I conclude this address, with the privilege of briefly presenting the restrictive system to your minds in its connec tion with a very important interest belonging to the national concern. No department of the action of the government is more profoundly interesting to the welfare of the people, than that which relates to the preservation of a sound currency. The maintenance of the public confidence in the stability of the currency depends upon the adherence to the principle of pay ment in the precious metals : this principle alone can retain values at a permanently equal standard, or, at least, at a stand ard so nearly equal as to be subject to no other changes than those which occur in the precious metals themselves. Our circulation of bank paper is professedly founded upon this basis; and the amount of this paper thrown into current use, is nicely adjusted by a rule, founded upon experience, which restrains the issue within the limits of a fixed proportion be tween the paper and the amount of specie in the country. This proportion may perhaps allow, in a period of prosperous trade, the emission of paper to five or six times the amount of specie applicable to its redemption. By such a rule, twenty millions of the precious metals would justify an aggregate emission of one hundred, or one hundred and twenty millions of paper. If, therefore, the demands of trade and domestic exchanges require a circulation of paper to the amount of one hundred millions, jmd the safe proportion of emission should be five of paper for one of gold or silver, it is obvious that the nation will stand in need of a specie deposit to the amount AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 75 of twenty millions. All over this amount will be a surplus, useless to the currency, and applicable to the purposes of ex portation or manufacture. It is obvious, if this proposition be true, that the subtraction of every dollar from the twenty millions, must be followed by a withdrawal of five dollars from the paper circulation, or else that the proportion between paper and specie must be increased beyond the limits of what is deemed a safe relation. The past experience of the United States has shown that, by the operation of excessive production of manufactures in Europe, especially in England, resulting from the existence of a great mass of pauper labor in these nations, we are singu larly exposed to the evils of importation much beyond the value of our exports. The practice of sending in upon us large amounts of merchandise upon foreign account, and the aid which this species of trade derives from our auction sys tem, rendering the first enjoyment of our market a matter of eager and destructive competition between our own merchant and the foreigner, have greatly contributed to increase this liability to an over supply. The inevitable consequence of this state of things is a withdrawal of our specie to pay the difference in value between the export and the import ; in order words, a continuing unfavorable balance of trade steadily abstracts the precious metals from our coffers. By the balance of trade I do not mean the balance apparent in figures in the treasury reports ; I am aware that that is a false guide to the fact ; I mean that real, unreported balance, which is grounded upon the actual cost of our imports in the places where they are bought, and upon the actual value of our exports in the places to which they are carried, of which it may be said, that the difference between them is rather felt in the state of exchange, than seen in any form of official ex hibition. Until this difference is paid by a new supply of exports which shall, in their turn, exceed the imports, the equilibrium cannot be restored, and there will be no return of the precious metals to supply the vacuum created by this 76 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. course of trade, and, consequently, until that period, no res toration of the paper circulation to its former condition. The inevitable effect of this state of things will be to occasion great and destructive changes in the money values of all the commodities of commerce. With what melancholy conse quences such changes visit the world of debtor and creditor, it need not be told to an intelligent mercantile community like this to whom, in part, I now address myself. I refer to the fact, in this brief form of comment, merely to indicate what I think a paramount principle, of policy in regulating the con cerns of our domestic industry, namely, that it should be a fundamental purpose, in the administration of the affairs of our government, to adopt such a system of duties as shall in variably confine the value of our imports to a sum within the capacity of the exports to pay ; and that this is the only sure method of preserving the currency in a sound and trustworthy condition, compatible with its expansion to the amount re quired in the ope*rations of commerce. By a necessary law of political economy, that system of duties would never fail to afford all the encouragement and protection to our domestic labor which its friends could desire. I have forborne, gentlemen, to expatiate upon the princi ples and facts involved in this problem, because it would lead me into a larger discourse than the present occasion would jus tify ; and I have, already, too much reason to be thankful for the patience with which you have borne the tax I have put upon your attention, to vex it with a further burden. The top ics with which I have engaged your minds, have necessarily led me into inquiries better suited to the retired study of the clos et than to a popular forum ; and, in the labor to adapt them to the brief hour I have allowed myself, I am sensible I have run the risk of rendering them obscure. I could not, however, look around me, from the position I at present occupy, with out finding persuasions to solicit me into the range of dis course which I have pursued. Both within the walls of your exhibition-room, and beyond its doors, these topics have been AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 77 too prominently cast upon my notice to render it proper in me to avoid them. There, within, as in a casket, are the jewels of our policy the bright and beautiful evidences of the value of our system ; without, are the din and murmur of a great city, where every thing is instinct with life. The crowds that hurry through her avenues ; the tumult of incessant transportation ; the thronged harbor and the busy wharf, tell us that we sit at the great gate of the nation. Through these portals are con ducted the exchanges of foreign and domestic trade ; and their mutual reliance is here signally made manifest. It would not be wonderful if you, gentlemen, accustomed as you are to look daily on this spectacle, and to inhabit in the midst of it, should forget, in the stupendous display of commerce around you, that there is a still greater and infinitely more valuable field of enterprise in the interior country. The existence of this Insti tute shows that you have not forgot it ; and the liberal zeal with which you pursue the great purpose of your association, declares that here, no less than in the bosom of the land, the true interests of America are clearly seen and ardently sustain ed. May the same intelligent and patriotic spirit take pos session of every avenue of our republic, and dwell at every threshold : may it equally pervade the North and the South, the East and the West, the present and all future times ! 78 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. A DISCOURSE ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM WIRT, LATE AT TORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES ; PRONOUNCED AT THE REQUEST OF THE BALTIMORE BAR BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE, ON THE 20TH OF MAY, 1834:. IT is the custom of the world to count that a melancholy occasion which is dedicated to the remembrance of the dead. The melancholy, at least, is not unmingled with emo tions of pleasure : it is grateful to the mind to call up to the glass of memory the features of the departed, that we may scan them when sober meditation has purified our passions, and when thoughts of rivalry may no longer disturb our judg ment. Such retrospects chasten and temper our natures and overcome that fear of death which the ordinary currents of opinion, the habitudes of our lives and the common lessons of worldly education all tend too cogently to fortify and confirm. Incongruous as it may seem to a rational mind, we are accus tomed to tremble at the thought that mortal man should die. This is the error of a sickly world, the offspring of a coward conscience. The realms beyond the grave are peopled with tribes that wisdom, affection and virtue need not regret to join. Thither, since creation s dawn, have repaired, without one backward step, the innumerable crowds whose little inter ests and earnest toils have ever made this orb a wondrous theatre of life and passion. Thither all complexions, natures and tempers have hurried with inevitable haste the wise, the brave, the beautiful ; the stately crowned king and the un furnished beggar ; the calm sage and the impetuous slave of WILLIAM WLRT. 79 ambition ; meek-eyed maiden, anxious matron and lisping child ; chieftain and clansman, conqueror and conquered, saint and sinner. Alike has that path been journeyed by the scholar overborne by the wealth of science ; by the restless minion of pride, with the pent fires of a soul that disdained companionship ; and by the mild and pensive and lowly spir its that once deemed earth too proud to bear them : all have been borne along upon a never-ebbing tide to the deep and illimitable ocean of eternity. As surely as that doomed tide shall flow, so surely shall we, in our turn, glide on its swift current and join the various throng that have floated out upon the vast deep. Is it fit that an upright man should be afraid ? Death is all around us : he walks on every highway ; he whis pers in every breeze ; he lodges under every roof-tree : he is our familiar household spirit ; revels with us in our cups ; sleeps in our bed and dashes his condiments into our pottage. Is it wise that our lives should be so ordered as to breed in us a fear of him ? He is a faithful monitor that walks beside us to teach us how to live ; the poor man s friend ; the rich man s patron ; the comforter and refuge of the captive, who unbars the dungeon s bolts and sets its prisoner free ; the nurse of the weary and sick at heart, for whom he spreads a grateful couch and " steeps the senses in forge tfulness." Why should he be counted that hideous and unwelcome thing that makes men shudder ? To him who pure of life and conscious of duty faithfully performed, death is but a serious companion that has no frown upon his brow ; and as time wanes and the term of the wayfarer s journey is in sight, death beckons to his cheerful guest as an hospitable host invites an exhausted traveller. Why should he fear ? Yet sorrow rises on the heart and must have its way. To the good and the wise it is a natural emotion and has its priv ileges : to them, however, it is only sorrow, not fear. For a departed friend our regrets are seemly badges of respect. They betoken pain at being separated from one who was affined to our affections by strong endearment, and are, therefore, trib- 80 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. utes to the worth of the person who has left us : they are scarcely less poignant when we lose a cherished companion, who has gone upon a far adventure to pass many years in dis tant climes. It is the thought of broken intercourse, more than of dissolution, that brings anguish to the religious mind. When a great man dies this regret spreads itself over a wider circle. He who has lived for his country whose thoughts, words and actions have been earnest to do good in his generation ; whose faculties for beneficence were large and efficient ; who, in his outgoings and comings-in and in his abiding, has taught mankind the true philosophy of happiness ; whose patient toil has elevated the condition of his species ; who has protected the weak and sheltered the humble and re buked the oppressor ; who has sweetened the bitterness of fortune to many ; who has calmed the fears of many ; who has brought merit out from the shade and put it in the genial light ; whose name is connected with benefactions and remem bered in the orisons of thousands that man is both great and good, and his grave will be moistened with the tears of a na tion. A narrower fold will enclose those in whose bosoms a deeper grief will abide when they remember that the seat of an affectionate friend is vacant. And still, within a holier pre cinct, there will be clustered around a domestic hearth those whose sorrow, sharp and too profound for the voice of com fort, shall find its vent only in salt tears and racking sobs and bitter lamentation. Yet it is separation only, not feaY, that conjures up this general emotion : it is the thought of parting that sets in motion that strong flood of feeling which over bears and masters the vulgar dread of death. There are many topics of mere worldly consolation that may be addressed to the sorrow of those who bewail the de parture of a good man. Such grief has its commutation and its recompense. The man departs, but his virtues live after he is gone. He who has studied by the aim and practice of his life to give an example to his species of an upright, faith ful and just citizen ; who has applied eminent talents to active WILLIAM WIRT. bl services in his country s cause ; who has, on all occasions, illus trated the right and condemned the wrong ; who has borne himself through the giddy-paced strife of human passions and through the contentions and excitements that have embittered man against his fellow, with so winning, calm and amiable a behavior as to moderate the tempest of unruly will and inspire mutual forbearance and charity that man s death deprives his country of his smallest part. The memory lives and in it a volume of virtues which, for generations to come, shall in struct, improve and strengthen the public good. It is only when his career is done .that his name and character become the peculiar possession of his country. Death buries in obliv ion the envy of his competitors, and gives to the history of his life that usefulness which belongs only to the tried and ap proved standards of practical virtue. The good works of such a man scarcely begin to be felt in the short span of his own existence ; but time matures and confirms them, and adapts them to the habits and feelings of the new generations that grow up to enjoy them. Such is the happy destiny of the pa triot s labors, and thus does the patriot s name grow to be the boast and glory of distant times ! The same individual in the relations of private life, if he has enlivened and embellished the intercourse of friendship, warmed up the domestic affections, quickened the charities of social commerce ; if he has taught friends and neighbors the practice of moral and Christian duty, and enlarged their esti mate of the courtesies and kindnesses of life; if he has as suaged anger ; repressed envy ; promoted toleration of opinion, conten t and cheerfulness ; encouraged the lowly to enterprises of good ; restrained the impetuous from tendencies to ill ; made men love innocence and simplicity of heart ; if he has smoothed, refined and elevated the temper of society around him, he has done that which death will not undo. His friends and neighbors will remember him, who has wrought this good, with a still kindlier memory when he is gone ; and both the remembered precepts and example will rise upon 82 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. their hearts with a mellower lustre when sorrow has cast its shadows upon them. His children will recall, with an earn est and devout enthusiasm, the familiar knowledge of their father s worth ; they will cherish and emulate his fame, and seek, through the same honorable road, to win the same esteem. The minutest lessons of his wisdom will come back upon their minds like the treasured pictures of childhood ; and the influences of his character, preserved in the affections of his family, will fall around them with the freshness of the dews of heaven upon the morning flowers. His wife, alas ! the only hopeless sufferer will remember all his gentleness and all his virtue with a proud pain that human consolation cannot reach. From her, the ear in which the holiest confidence was breathed, the heart upon which was laid her most secret affec tions, the tongue that spoke what no other tongue might utter these from her are gone, and friendship, fame and fortune supply but ineffective substitutes. Her grief is sacred and alone, of all the world, without its earthly recompense. To God, who respects a broken heart, and who endues the strick en spirit with patience to bear the extremes of this world s chances, she may turn as to her only yet most sufficient ref uge ; and even turning there her affliction will find a broader hope, and her vision will be quickened by a clearer light de rived from he husband s earnest faith and the well-remem bered precepts of his piety. We are called together, on the present occasion, to con template the life and character of such a man as I have de scribed. The recent death of William Wirt has thrown our confederacy into mourning ; and it was in the first burst of a natural and most sincere emotion of grief that it was resolved, by the Baltimore Bar, that something more than the ordinary tribute of respect should be bestowed upon the exalted virtue of one who, whatever might be the claims of his country at large, was more especially allied to this fraternity, by ties of intimate companionship and close professional connection. In the discharge of this duty it is now my province to appear WILLIAM WIKT. 83 before this community. All that personal affection for the de ceased or large esteem for his worth might bring to such a task, is mine to offer : I am conscious I bring little else to recom mend the selection made by my professional brethren, of the individual entrusted with the expression of their feelings on the occasion. In this society, however, my subject supplies an eloquence of its own. The common esteem for the illustri ous individual, admiration of his eminent genius, pride in his fellowship, reverence for his character, and love for him as a virtuous man, have, far and wide, prompted a lively sorrow at his loss ; and these sentiments seated in every bosom, and fill ing every mind, address a silent appeal to this community, that is adapted to awaken emotions which language might in vain seek to strengthen. I propose to recall, in a brief form of notice, the principal incidents in the life of the deceased. The story of that life is adorned with a beautiful moral. It has all the unity > consist ency and plan of a career of generous pursuits through the successive gradations of virtue and usefulness. It is a history of rare natural endowments, directed by an ingenuous disposi tion and by a noble sense of what constitutes true renown, to an aspiration after the most honorable rewards. It tells what labor may surmount, " the steep where Fame s proud temple shines afar ;" how, in early life, the obstructions of narrow for tune and inauspicious poverty may be encountered and van quished j how, as the young aspirant moves onward, his hopes may be lifted up to cheer his toil ; how height after height may be gained and progressive victories may be won ; how the mis givings of the mind, which so commonly cloud the spirits of young adventurers, gradually break away before the broader" light of the higher atmosphere ; and how gratefully these bet ter prospects reward the perseverance by which they have been reached. It shows to use the language of him whose death we mourn what " midnight labor and holy emulation" may achieve. It tells that those who earnestly pursue these noble aims shall find their surest auxiliaries in the energy and 84 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. fervor of their own minds. Above all, it tells how unerringly faith and honor and truth commend their votaries to the ap plause of the good ; what suffrages they collect from the esteem of mankind ; what bland and mellow rays of contentment they shed upon the heart ; and how they smooth the path from in fancy to manhood, from manhood to the grave. Mr. Wirt was born in Bladensburg, in this State, the youngest of six children of what, without derogation, may be called a lowly parentage. His father was a Swiss, his mother a German ; and at a very tender age he was left an orphan upon the world, his mother, who had survived her husband, having died when he was but eight years old. He inherited a scant patrimony which, by the thrift of a frugal uncle, Mr. Jasper Worth, was employed in giving him the ru diments of so much of a classical education as the meagre opportunities of our country, at that time, afforded. The epoch of his birth was the eighth of November, near four years before the declaration of independence. His boyhood, therefore, witnessed those tempestuous times that marked the greatest struggle for national liberty recorded in the annals of history. He was too young to be a partaker in the action of those scenes, though it is scarcely to be supposed that with his observant and susceptible mind even in infancy a subject of remark among those who knew him he did not imbibe somewhat of that peculiar tone of feeling which belonged to the * f plain living and high thinking men" of the Revolution. A familiar conversancy with the principles of human liberty, a stern and uncompromising love of country that did not spend itself in profession so much as it broke forth into daily action, frugal habits of life, ignorance of luxury and contempt for frivolous manners, little application to the arts of growing rich, and large commingling in public affairs, brave submission to misfortune, patience in privation, and a quick sense of na tional wrong were the distinguishing traits of that day of strife, and were the common household virtues of the people of these States. This complexion of character was, in its due WILLIAM WIRT. 85 proportion, infused into old and young ; and it must occur to those who have studied the survivors of these times, that, up to the latest period of their lives, they almost invariably have retained, through all the changes of present society, some dis tinct traces of the character I have imputed to the era of the Revolution. In Mr. Wirt these early influences were contin ually breaking forth above the mass of new habits, and showing the direction of that strong undercurrent which flowed at the bottom of his thoughts. His writings are full of that devotion to public virtue and of that attachment to country which, in the former day, were even more of a passion than they were a principle, and which now, alas ! seem to be overtrodden in the restless pursuit of private ends, and, in the more artificial and voluptuous cast of manners, forgotten or despised. It is pleasant to look back to the early stages of life in the history of men who have arrived at great eminence, that we may endeavor to discern the first flickering of that light which afterwards spread around so broad a radiance, and that we may contrast the young germs of power in the infant with their subsequent development. There is a charm in the days of childhood which always makes them a pleasant subject of contemplation : their unheeded ramblings, their thoughtless jollity, their innocence invest them with a certain poetical freshness in the musings of manhood. They have the verdure of the spring, and resemble the smooth surface of the mead, where every blade of grass and every useful plant and every noxious weed shoots up with the same tenderness of fibre and the same liveliness of hue, and all look fresh and healthful. The growth of a riper season discriminates the good from. the bad, the useful from the worthless, and furnishes that wide variety of character which is perceptible to the most careless glance. . The subject of our present discourse was, at the age of seven years, removed from beneath the shelter of his maternal roof to be initiated in the first mysteries of letters. The 86 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. place of his migration was Georgetown, then a thriving village at no great distance from the cottage in which he was born, they might both be seen from the summit of a neighboring hill. To him, however, it was a weary length of way ; and, as he was wont to describe it himself, it was with a full heart and a desolate sense of forlornness that he found himself separa ted, for the first time, from those who constituted all the world to him. But use is a plastic artist on the mould of a school boy s temper, and soon brought him to be familiar with his exile. The beautiful heights of Georgetown were the accus tomed scenes of his early sports, and from these eminences he often cast his wistful glance towards his native village which, some eight miles remote, lay in the ^bosom of the hills that bounded the eastern horizon. He was, even at that early period, distinguished for his playful temper, his shrewd apprehension, and for his imaginative mind ; and I can fancy with what transport the young votary of the reluctant rites of Cadmus, during the period of this banishment, hailed the ap proach of the holiday that was to bless him with the enjoy ment of a short return to the humble mansion of his mother. I can fancy him setting out, on the long-expected day, on that homeward journey and wending his way towards the village on the Anacosta. Some three miles on that route he had to climb a steep ascent, which having gained, I can imagine with what rapture, even in the eagerness of his holiday spirits, he stopped to look around him on the fair landscape : that here, with that quick eye for beauty, and that soul to drink inspiia- tion at the high altars of the gorgeous temple of Nature, his sight was charmed with the rich and enchanting prospect that broke upon it. There he might discern the calm and majes tic Potomac glittering, like a broad lake, in the midst of green fields and native groves, and sweeping towards the ocean with its ample flood, in smooth and placid dignity ; while the fre quent bark and the yet rare and stately ship threw their white sails against the deep green forest, and enlivened the tranquil scene with the animation of an infant commerce. Upon that WILLIAM WIET. 87 rich mirror of the waters did he see reflected the sylvan pict ures of the land with " woody hill o er hill encompassed round." There, too, he might discern, far off, the western hills showing their bold crags through which the river had shot its way to meet the tide. From this same height he might look down the abrupt descent upon a level plain, where " for many a rood" there lay beneath his eye varied field and pasture, and occasional relics of the forest far across, until it terminated on the margin of the wide water. This plain, more beautiful from its contrast with the encompassing hills, that in gentle slopes or in sudden crags begirt its border, itself presented a scene to catch the boy s delighted eye. The lowing herds that, at summer evening, trooped across its sur face ; the embowered streamlet that crept among its coverts ; the slow team that labored under the burden of the full har vest ; the long shadows thrown athwart the verdant meadow ; the circling night-hawk that darted in swift evolutions above it in quest of prey ; and, far along its western confine, the bur nished gold of sunset illumining the river with tints more lovely than the poet s enchantment flings around " the realms of faery," all these images then rose on the young observer s eye with a witchery that every added year in the progress to manhood robbed of some of its potency. How little did the tyro then dream, that on this very spot where he halted to in dulge his sight, an imperial dome, splendid as the palace of the Caesars, was in aftertimes to arise and spread its broad foundations over the summit of the hill ! that its magnificent terrace and its trophied pillar, rich with the records of the heroism of an unborn republic, were to look forth over that pastoral plain, and down upon a city whose avenues, in the lifetime of the gazer, should be crowded with the functiona ries of an empire whose wings should reach from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and whose body expand from the Atlantic to the far and illimitable West ! How little did he imagine that in that sculptured Capitol, he himself, the wayward school-boy with no higher thought than to make 88 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. rude music on a rustic reed should, in the pride of his man hood, be clothed with one of the most honorable functions of the republic, to which, eminent as it might be, his genius should impart its richest grace ! that in the halls of that Capi tol the throng of citizens should press to witness the triumphs of his mind and hang entranced upon his words, whose elo quent melody should enthral every heart, and sway, with undisputed authority, the learned, the wise and the good ! How little did he think, that in the thick covert of the wood, visible from the same spot, after a life of desirable length, spent in honorable toil and crowned with the applause of all whose good opinion virtuous ambition might covet, after he had seen an affectionate progeny grow up around him, when all his wanderings had ceased, his race been won and the noble prize in his hand how little did he, the thoughtless, cheerful boy, dream that in that quiet nook his honored bones were to be laid, among departed worthies, with all the chief dignitaries of the nation to attend his bier ! If propitious Destiny herself had invited him to choose a place of rest and appoint the time and manner of his repose, could he have chosen one more grateful to his temper and his feelings than this which she has given him ? There, after a long absence and amid many vicissitudes of fortune ; having for many years, and, as he might have deemed, forever quit his native state ; formed new friendships and planted deep affections in another soil there, by mere accident, he had returned a casual visitor, and after an interval of more than half a century, has been borne to his rest among the illustrious servants of the re public, in the nation s cemetery, whose precincts may be seen from the same hill-top that looks down upon his natal cottage. Happy man ! Rich in the treasures of a splendid name, rich in the affections of his country, rich in the memory of his manly virtues, and even richer still in the recollections that cluster around his tomb ! After one year passed at this school in Georgetown, the death of his mother threw him upon the guardianship of his WILLIAM WIRT. 89 uncle, and he was soon afterwards removed to an academy in Charles County, under the superintendance of Mr. Dent. Here he remained for three years, and, at the age of eleven, was again transferred to a school of some note in Montgomery County, kept by a very worthy Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. James Hunt, with whom he continued to prosecute his studies until 1787, when the school was broken up. It was a peculiar advantage to the young scholar .that Mr. Hunt was a gentleman of a liberal and accomplished mind, of agreeable powers of conversation and imbued with a good taste in liter ature. The influence of these qualities was soon conspicu ously seen upon his pupil. The preceptor had a good library to which the student had access, and at this fountain he first drank of the waters whose" flavor may be found infused into so many of the best exhibitions of his genius in after years. It is curious to observe how the predominating colors of the mind first begin to show themselves in early life. Mr. Wirt was both an orator and a writer, and a chief beauty in his per formances, in either character, was a certain classical fecun dity of illustration, in which was displayed both the graceful wit and easy, effortless style of the best English writers of the pe riod of Queen Ann. His imagination dwelt with most pleas ure upon the pictures furnished by the ancient classics, and gave many evidences of its training in the school that formed Addison and Pope : indeed he may justly be called the Addi- son of America. Under the roof of Mr. Hunt his studies were chiefly directed to the literature of the period to which I have referred. They were stealthily pursued with that fervor which always marks the addictedness of a sprightly mind when al lowed to consult its own instincts ; and as these pursuits were indulged, in some degree, at the expense of his ordinary scho lastic duties and in the face of the preceptor s interdict, they grew upon the affection of the student with a more indelible impression, and became, like bread eaten in secret, of a sweet er flavor to the palate. At the age of thirteen he aspired to the character of the author, being prompted, as it is told of 90 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. him, by emulation of Pope who began " to lisp in numbers" at twelve. Like the subject of his rivalry our school-boy s first effort was in verse : he soon, however, discovered that the Muses were not propitious and fortunately betook himself to prose, to which he adhered for the rest of his life, and in which he won no small celebrity even while yet in leading strings at school. I mention these trivial circumstances merely because they show the eager ply of his mind, and enable us to trace out one of the sources of that reputation which afterwards be came so brilliant. His passion for oratory was not much behind his zeal for composition. He was a successful declaimer at this period ; and an incident occurred, while he was under the care of Mr. Hunt, that furnished a prognostic of his future occupations. The magnetism of genius is infallible in giving its direction to the needle whenever the attracting matter is brought near enough to exert its influence. The school was within a few miles of the court house of the county. On one occasion Mr. Hunt permitted his boys to attend the session of the court. In this rustic temple of Themis the future Attorney-General of the United States first caught the spark that fired his genius. He witnessed an animated and sharply contested trial with so engrossed and delighted a spirit, that immediately upon his return to school, he proposed to his comrades the establish ment of a mock forum resembling the real one they had vis ited, as much as their crude knowledge of legal forms enabled them to make it ; and he, the leader in the scheme, prepared a constitution and system of government for the little tribunal. On this theatre he subsequently made frequent essays which, doubtless, were characterized by all the vivacity and energy, if not by the acumen and learning which distinguished his later displays before the Supreme Court of the United States. By the time he had reached his fifteenth year the school had closed. His patrimony was now spent, and the world was before him, a helpless lad, armed only with a lively tem per and good store of scholarly acquirements. His playful WILLIAM WIRT. 91 manners, his frank and ingenuous disposition and manly qual ities had made him friends whithersoever he had gone. Among these some became distinguished at a later period, and ever recognized, with a peculiar satisfaction, these early alliances. His preceptors had always regarded him with strong affection, and many predictions had been made of future renown in be half of a youth who had pursued his boyish path with so up right a temper and with such laudable assiduity. Though an orphan, therefore, and literally penniless, he was not without riches in that good name which is better than house and land. Silver and gold take wings unto themselves and flee away, or, what is worse, they benumb the faculties of the young with that most mischievous of diseases, indolence, and leave the canker of idleness to eat into the mind just at that period when education should be busy to strengthen it for future toils : the day of self-dependence is then too apt to arrive at the very time when the disarmed and unprovided man is not only weak in his destitution, but weak also in his intrinsic capabilities. The resources of a good name and of sound education, on the contrary, are ever present to supply expedients against misfor tune, and to lift up the individual to new and valuable acqui sitions of comfort. So fared it with William Wirt. Among his school-fellows at Mr. Hunt s, was Ninian Ed wards, not long since a member of the Senate of the United States, and afterwards Governor of Illinois. The father of this gentleman, Mr. Benjamin Edwards, lived at that time in Mont- oomery County, and had accidentally seen the " Constitution" of the school-boy court, which so favorably attracted his atten tion as to induce him to invite the author to a residence in his own family, in the capacity of a private tutor to his son Ni nian and two nephews who were preparing themselves for col lege. Mr. Wirt cheerfully accepted the invitation and re mained in the family of this gentleman something short of two years. Benjamin Edwards was a man of vigorous mind, of en larged conversation with the world, of solid principles and of 92 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. great moral worth. He was, moreover, a patriot deeply im bued with genuine American feelings. Under the auspices of such a man our student could not but be advantageously im pressed with the value of the high attributes of character with which he was brought into daily commerce. He was wont to expatiate with an affectionate interest upon these influences over his mind, and to ascribe to them a large share in the di rection which his character received towards that earnest de votion of his faculties to the useful aims of life by which he was distinguished. In this situation he had a favorable opportunity to extend his studies into an ample range of classical literature, and fre quently to employ his pen in those exercises that contributed to give it the polish and force which was so conspicuous in his writings. I leave to the biographer of Mr. Wirt to enlarge upon the details of his life. My office is to select such prominent points in it as may illustrate his character, by showing the more con trolling agencies that shaped its course. He had already chosen his profession and first began to study law at Montgomery court house under William P. Hunt, the son of his early friend and tutor : these studies were com pleted with Mr. Thomas Swann, but a short time since, the attorney for the District of Columbia. In the autumn of 1792, being yet but twenty years of age, he removed to Culpepper, in Virginia, where he obtained his first admission to the Bar. In little more than two years after this date he had acquired a fair practice and had won rapidly upon the public estimation as a man destined to honorable eminence. He had the good fortune at this period to gain the regard of a distinguished gentleman of Albemarle, Dr. George Gilmer, whose daughter Mildred he married in the year 1795. ^ r - Gilmer, besides being an eminent physician was a scholar of high repute, and remarkable for his various attainments in classical literature. With this gentleman, at his residence at Pen Park, Mr. Wirt now took up his abode. Here he found WILLIAM WIKT. 93 himself surrounded by the attractions of a polished society and brought into intimate companionship with some of the most conspicuous men of the day. Among these were Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, with whom he formed friendships that were never severed but by death, and which were frequently signalized by the lavish offer of honors, from each of the individuals named, when the suffrages of the na tion had successively elevated them to the Chief Magistracy. Here, too, he found friends whose influence over his character and fortunes was, perhaps, not less signal, than that of the il lustrious personages I have mentioned ; I mean in the well- stored library of his father-in-law. There did he enjoy a silent communion with the spirits of the immortal fathers of English learning, whose imperishable wisdom, condensed in volumes of philosophy, transfused into his mind their own rich essence, and made him familiar with the vast world of thought. Bar row and Tillotson, Hooker, Bacon and Locke, and all that class of nervous writers who have laid the massive foundations of the literature of our language, became his favorite studies ; and with what success they were cultivated may have often been recognized by Mr. Wirt s audience in the strong and ap propriate diction, and in the logical precision which gave the substance and complexion to his oratory. In the year 1799, a severe domestic affliction, in the loss of his wife, gave a new turn to his fortunes. The House of Delegates of Virginia elected him, in the following winter, to the post of their clerk, a situation which had been previously filled by some of the most prominent men of the State. This post he was induced to accept, as it furnished employment and change of scene to him, at a time when his feelings, torn by his late bereavement, required the antidote of busy life against their own poignancy. He remained in this station for two years, practising law in the intervals of his official voca tion. At the end of this term, so favorably had he impressed the Legislature with his ability, he was honored by that body with an unsolicited and most unexpected appointment as 94 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Chancellor of the Eastern district of the Commonwealth. The duties of this responsible and elevated post required that he should reside at Williamsburg. He did not, however, long occupy his seat upon the bench ; for in the fall of 1802, hav ing married the daughter of Colonel Gamble, of Richmond, a lady of extraordinary merit and cultivation his present suffer ing widow he soon afterwards resigned his chancellorship and, at the close of 1803, removed to Norfolk, where he re sumed the assiduous pursuit of his profession. At this era of his life, being now about thirty-two years of age, we have to date his first appearance before the world in the character of an author. Just before he removed to Norfolk he wrote more for recreation than for fame, the little volume of the " Letters of the British Spy," which first appeared in the Richmond Argus, and which being subsequently collected have, very much against the original calculation of their au thor, given him a wide literary renown their popularity being tested by as many as ten editions. His success at Norfolk, though he was called into rivalry with many of the acutest and most powerful minds of his pro fession was such as to place him, in the estimation of all men, among the most distinguished of the Bar. In 1806 he took up his residence at Richmond, and in the succeeding year was engaged, by the orders of his friend Mr. Jefferson, then Presi dent of the United States, to aid the Government attorney in the celebrated prosecution of Aaron Burr. The fame won by him in this endeavor is still fresh in the memory of all who knew him. His speech, on that occasion, attained a repu tation which, for a long time, made it a theme for the dec lamation of the schools, and aroused the public interest to wards him in a degree that ever afterwards rendered him one of the most observed and admired advocates of this nation. From this time Mr. Wirt has lived so much in the public gaze as to render it necessary to say but little of his career. In 1816 he was appointed, by Mr. Madison, the attorney of the United States for the District of Virginia, and in the WILLIAM WIRT. 95 following year, by Mr. Monroe, Attorney-General of the Gov ernment of the Union, a post which he continued to occupy, with distinguished ability, through the terms of Mr. Monroe and his successor, Mr. Adams, until the year 1829. His position at Washington, as Attorney-General, first brought him into contact with the Baltimore Bar, at which, during the term of his office, he was a constant practitioner ; and from the date of his resignation until the period of his death he was a resident of this city. It is remarkable in the history of Mr. Wirt that, with the most fervent public spirit and the most generous love of country, with talents eminently adapted to the sphere of po litical life, his ambition never seems to have been dazzled with the lustre of political renown. Although often urged to enter upon the theatre of politics, and tempted by the most flattering promises both from the people and those highest in their confidence, among whom, especially, may be named Mr. Jefferson, he never could be prevailed upon to turn aside from the road he had marked but for himself in professional life. On one occasion, alone, do we find him, even for a moment, seduced from the determined pursuit of his own appropriate path. While a resident of Richmond, in 1808, he consented to take an election to the House of Delegates of Virginia, where he served but a single session, speedily betaking him self back to the bosom of the Bar, from which he never again departed. In this rapid biographical sketch which I have thought it proper to the occasion to bring into review, I have extracted the principal materials from a memoir, published but a few years since, from the pen of one of our own fraternity, now no more.* I claim, in making this acknowledgment, to be indulged with the privilege of a passing tribute to the. memory of a very dear friend, around whose bier, had I been present, * Peter H. Cruse, a gentleman of distinguished literary accom plishment, a good writer, scholar and poet, who fell a victim to the cholera in Baltimore, on the 7th of September, 1832. 96 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. it would have been my melancholy duty to scatter the memo rials of affection. He was swept away in the pride and vigor of manhood by that ruthless pestilence which, not yet two years past, spread desolation over many a glad household, and dismay and terror through this land. Gifted with a mind of exquisite beauty, and with a heart as honest as the light of day, he had cultivated, with an earnest and simple devotion, the refinements of scholarship and the delicacies of moral feeling, until his whole character became one of polished and unspotted transparency. To him even inelegance was a vice, and a want of grace almost a want of virtue. Truth had for him a captivation that no imagery could rival, and nature was a deity that his soul adored with a fervid and enthusiastic wor ship. I knew him long, and every secret of his bosom knew, and can say that there never sat enthroned within a human breast a spirit of more undeviating rectitude, of kinder or warmer impulses, of more unstained honor, or of more genuine and self-forgetting attachments. He has departed ! alas, too soon for his own fame, which, if Heaven had spared him but the ordinary space of the life of man, would have broken forth upon the world expanded and embellished by the pain fully hoarded treasures of thought which, through many an hour of secret toil and unwearied study, he was laying up for future use ! From the pen of such a man has the world been put in possession of the incidents of William Wirt s life. To that memoir I refer all who would more intimately learn the vicis situdes through which the subject of our remembrance pur sued his way up that plain upon whose highest stage is erected the tomb that now guards his dust. Mr. Wirt s literary efforts were not as numerous as his country, perhaps, had a right to claim of him. In 1812, he published "The Old Bachelor," a series of essays somewhat after the manner of Addison, which first ap peared in the Richmond Enquirer. Although several of these essays are from other hands, the principal and greater number WILLIAM WIRT. 97 are Mr. Wirt s. They were rapidly and, without derogation it may be said, sometimes carelessly written, evidently exhibiting more a purpose to amuse the writer than to enhance his repu tation. Their popularity, however, like that of the British Spy, has borne them through several editions. He had pre viously published some papers vindicating Mr. Madison s claims to the Presidency, under the signature of " One of the People," whiclf discussions, although, at the date of their ap pearance, sufficiently striking to attract an extensive com mendation from the public, were of too temporary a character to be preserved in a more durable form than that in which they first came before the world. The life of Patrick Henry was published in 1817. This was an undertaking of a character more compatible with the reputation of its author ; and the design of it had been long cherished by him, as something not only due to his country, but also, in a certain sense, due to the place that he held in the affections of the State which he had chosen for his home. Unfortunately the author was not allowed the leisure neces sary for the accurate accomplishment of a work of such philosophical pretensions. The multiplying and distracting engagements of professional life are sadly adverse to elabo rate and perfect literary enterprise ; and this work, in some degree, shares the character of Mr. Wirt s previous exhibi tions. It was given to the world, at last, under all the disad vantages of a hurried labor completed in circumstances the least auspicious to its success. It is still, however, a beautiful tribute of regard from an adopted son of Virginia to his foster-parent, and limns, with a bold and enchanting pencil, the portrait of one of the noblest and most glorious of the children of that modern " Mother of the Gracchi." In the catalogue of Mr. Wirt s literary productions I must not fail to mention some occasional addresses made by him at intervals when invited by public appointment to such efforts. Among these are conspicuous for the beauty of their compo sition and the manly and nervous cast of thought, "A Dis- 5 98 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. course on the Lives and Characters of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams," delivered by him, at Washington, in October, 1826, "An address delivered before the Students of Rut- ger s College, in New Jersey, in July, 1830," and the Oration pronounced by him, in this city, in October of the same year, on the occasion of the celebration of the " Three days Revo lution in France." These three productions, the exhibitions of a mind ripened by experience, brought forth in the midst of incessant professional application and, I may add, written at a stage of his life in which disease had already made sad inroads upon his constitution, present him in a very favorable light .to the public. The first is one of the most masterly ef fusions that our literature can boast of. It is distinguished throughout by the mellow and golden lights of his genius, and never has been surpassed for vigor by any previous attempt of his strongest day ; while its style is chastened and polished by the taste which, up to the latest hour of his life, seemed to be ever acquiring a new delicacy. There are passages in this oration that will long be preserved among the most classical and graphic sketches that belong to the rich stock of our lan guage. The subject was well fitted to draw out the sweetest notes of his musical fancy. The almost miraculous and in credible incident of the death of the two patriarchs of Ameri can liberty, on the fourth of July, in the midst of a celebration of the national jubilee under circumstances of peculiar em phasis, at the end of exactly half a century from the era of the country s freedom, during which these venerable men had seen the people they had established grown to be a master- state among the powers of the earth ; themselves the only survivors of the committee, who reported the Declaration of Independence fifty years before ; one of them the very pen man of that instrument ; both of them, in turn, Presidents of the Republic, the respective leaders of the two great adverse parties of the nation : both men of surpassing ability, and crowned with the glories of a brilliant fame in the Old World no less than in the New ; high seated upon the pinnacles of WILLIAM WIRT. 99 human greatness where posterity long shall turn its eye upon them ; both sages and statesmen, than whom history has not told of any more noted for the work they have done in that most magnificent of human labors, the founding of free em pires. To these characteristics may be added, that they were not more eminent for public service, than that they were hal lowed in the public affections by a length of days far beyond the common lot of man, each bending, though not oppressed, beneath the sunshine of more than eighty summers ; and, what was the most enchanting feature in their later history, each pursuing his tottering march down the decline of life with calm and philosophic contentment, filled with amiable care for the posterity they had blessed, and all rivalries long forgotten in cheerful correspondence with each other. That two such men, several hundred miles remote, should take their departure from earth on the same day, and that day so dis tinguished in the calendar of the nation, and so peculiarly their own festival amid the joyous reverberations of artillery, the ringing of bells and the shouts of a people rejoicing on the birth-day of their freedom, seemed, as the author himself described it, more like the visible translation of prophets than the common doom of men. These circumstances presented to the orator a splendid field for the display of that vivid and racy eloquence which he so well knew how to employ. In addition to these, Mr. Jefferson was his personal friend, early patron and adviser, one of whom Mr. Wirt never spoke but in terms of endearment and fond regard. Whatever of rich, harmonious and cogent discourse, these considerations might be expected to produce, may be found in the oration. It has a tone of sober wisdom above which rises a note of enthusi astic remembrance and glowing sentiment, and over the whole is cast the polish and lustre of an accurate and highly-trained scholarship. The address to the students of Rutger s College is of a different class of oratory. It is the tempered, calm and se date exhortation of age addressing its wisdom to the heart of 100 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. generous youth. It almost conjures up to the reader the figure of a good man, in the vale of years, laying his hand, with old-fashioned precision, upon the head of his children, and giving them the blessing that was to guard their steps among the walks of wily men : unambitious of ornament, it speaks in the plain language of Mentor to the young Telema- chus with a voice of gentle admonition, and it bears the thoughtful and majestic front of solid usefulness. This ora tion will be preserved with reverent fondness, for many a year to come, by the successive pupils of that school where it was pronounced, and, I trust, by many thousands of the future youth of America, and will thus transfuse into coming gener ations the noble and upright spirit in which it was conceived. The last of the three addresses I have mentioned, was heard by many persons who are now present. It was uttered with all the fire that signalized the early manhood of its au thor, and seemed as if it sprang out of a rejuvenescence of his character. It is warm, devoted and earnest in its patriotism, and shows with what enthusiasm and delight the speaker could re-summon that glad spirit of liberty which, in the exciting times of his earlier career, took possession of his soul and caused it to leap at the triumphs of freedom. In taking this survey of the chief productions of Mr. Wirt s pen, I am tempted to pause for a moment, to express my re gret that the pursuits of his life had not been more deci dedly applied to literary labors, than either circumstances or his own choice seem to have permitted. He was remarkably qualified by the character of his mind, and, I think I am war ranted in saying, by his inclination, to attain great distinction in these pursuits. A career, in a larger degree, directed to this end would certainly have been not less honorable to him self, nor less useful to his country, and I would fain persuade myself, not less profitable, although the consideration of gain be but an unworthy stimulant to the glorious rewards which should interest the ambition of genius. He had, however, a large family around him who depended upon him for protec- WILLIAM WIKT. 101 tion ; and it may be that, surveying the sad history of the gift ed spirits who have lighted the path of mankind with the lamps of their own minds and made their race rich with the treasures of wisdom and science, he has turned distrustfully from the yearnings of his ambition, and followed the broader and more certain track that led to professional fame and wealth. I can excuse him for the choice, while I lament over the dispensation of human rule by which the latter pursuits should have such an advantage. As a literary man he would have acquired a more perma nent renown than the nature of professional occupation or the exercises of the forum are capable of conferring upon their votaries. The pen of genius erects its own everlasting monu ment ; but the triumphs of the speaker s eloquence, vivid, brilliant and splendid as they are, live but in the history of their uncertain effects and in the intoxicating applause of the day : to incredulous posterity they are a distrusted tradition, the extravagant boasting of an elder age prone by its nature to disparage the present by the narrated glories of the past. So has it, even now, befallen the name of Patrick Henry, whom not all his affectionate biographer s learned zeal has rescued from the unbelieving smile of but a second genera tion. The glory of Cicero lives more conspicuously in his written philosophy than even in his speeches, which, although transmitted by his own elaborate and polished hand, may rather be assigned to his literary than to his forensic fame. Mr. Wirt had many inducements to the cultivation of let ters. He might have entered upon the field, in this country, almost without a rival. Our nation, young in the career of liberal arts, had but few names to reckon when asked, as she has sometimes been in derision, where were the evidences of her scholarship. Her pride would have pointed to a man like William Wirt with a peculiar complacency. His comprehen sive and philosophical mind, acute and clear-sighted, was well adapted to master the truths of science : it was fruitful and imaginative and full of beautiful illustration. He had wit 102 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. and humor of the highest flavor, combined with a quick and accurate observation of character : his taste, sensitive and re fined, delighted in the harmony and truth of nature ; his full memory furnished him abundant stores of learning ; his style, rich and clear, like a fountain of sparkling waters played along a channel of golden sands and bright crystals and through meads begirt with flowers. Above all, the tendency of his mind was to usefulness : he indited no thought that did not serve to inculcate virtuous sentiments, noble pursuits, love of country, the value of generous and laudable ambition, trust in Heaven, or earnest attachment to duty. He has embellished and vivified the grave experience of age with all the warm en thusiasm of youth, and has taught his countrymen the most severe and self-denying devotion to purposes of good, in les sons of so amiable a tone, as to win many a young champion to virtue by the kindness of his persuasion. His sketches of character are pleasantly graphic, and leave us room to believe that, either in the drama or in that species of fictitious his tory which the great enchanter of this age has made so pop ular a vehicle for profound philosophy, he would have attain ed to an exalted fame. In short, there are but few among us who, in scholarship, learning, observation or facility and beauty of expression, may claim to be ranked with William Wirt. His character as a lawyer is peculiarly entitled to com memoration on the present occasion. It is an admirable model for the contemplation of all professional aspirants. He was a careful, laborious and even painful student. Deeply versed in the principles and precedents of jurisprudence, his mind was copiously imbued with the auxiliary learning that enabled him to illustrate the abstruse lore of his profession. When he appeared at the bar to try a cause, it was evident he felt that something more was at stake than the interest of the individual whose rights had been committed to his charge. His ample preparation, his solicitous devotion to the question before him, and his unblenching attention to the progress of WILLIAM WIKT. 103 the trial, showed that personal reputation and a zealous care to acquit himself in his great office to the satisfaction of his countrymen, no less swayed his endeavors than the trust his duty put upon him. The amenity of his manners, his good will, and the expression of affection and even of jocular com panionship that played upon his massive features and lit up his clear and intelligent blue eye, evinced how much he felt that, in the necessary collisions and steady resistance of hard- fought debate, no burst of temper nor effusion of heated zeal should overmaster his equanimity or cause him, even for an instant, to forget the courtesies and kindnesses which he al ways held to be due to his brethren of the bar. He was a powerful orator, and had the art to sway courts and juries with a master s spirit. The principal traits of his eloquence were great clearness and force in laying the founda tions of an argument, and the steady pursuit of it through the track of logical deduction. He was ingenious in choosing his position, and, that once taken, his hearers were borne to his conclusion upon a tide almost as irresistible as that which wafts the idle skiff upon the Potomac, downward from the mountains to the last cataract that meets the ebb and flood of the sea. In this train of earnest argumentation the atten tion of his auditory was kept alive by a vivid display of clas sic allusion, by flashes of wit and merriment, and by the famil iar imagery which was called in aid to give point to his de monstrations, or light to what the subject rendered obscure to the common apprehension. He sometimes indulged in satire and invective, and, where the subject called for it, in stern de nunciation. Many have felt with what indignant power these weapons have been wielded in his hand. His utterance, in early life, was said to have been confused and ungraceful. Practice had conquered these defects, and no man spoke with a more full, effortless and unobstructed fluency. His diction was scrupulously neat, and might have often deceived an au dience into the opinion that his speeches were prepared in the closet. His manner was remarkably impressive. Endowed 104 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. with a commanding figure, a singularly graceful carriage and with a countenance of manly and thoughtful beauty, that struck an instant sense of respect into all that looked upon him, he was pre-eminent in that most significant trait of an orator, action. We can all remember the rich and flowing music of that voice which was wont to stir the inmost souls of our tribunals and bring down the loud applause of delighted by-standers ; the dignity with which we have seen his majestic person dilate itself before the judgment-seat ; the ineffable grace that beamed upon the broad expanse of his brow, and the kindled transport of his fine face, in those rapt moments when his mind was all in a blaze with the inspirations of his own eloquence. These were the rare gifts that imparted a charm to his oratory, which often wrought more powerfully for the success of his cause than even the efficacy of " right words set in order." Few men have passed through life with so little lingering hostility against them as he. High place and broad repute engendered no envy among his compeers, nor excited jealous feeling. Various and complicated connections with society, with all their inevitable motives to conflict with individuals, seem to have been borne by him, without raising a harsh sur mise, or even a momentary provocation among the many who have been destined to feel the weight of his overwhelming tal ents. There predominated in his character a profound and acute sense of lofty honor that honor which disdains an un just thought as much as a disgraceful act ; and all who knew him felt that they might repose with unwatchful faith in his se vere and unalterable integrity. This trait rose above all oth ers in his professional relations and made him, what all ac knowledged him to be, the head and ornament of a brother hood whose most precious attribute and greatest glory consist in the scrupulous fidelity with which they discharge the most important and honorable trusts to society. It was his fortune to be entrusted, both in his official ca pacity as the law officer of the government, and afterwards as WILLIAM WIRT. 105 a private pleader in the Supreme Court of the United States, with the conduct of some of the most important controversies that ever interested the jurisprudence of a free country. There is no moral eminence among the dwellers upon earth more commanding or dignified than that upon which, on such occa sions, the learned and upright lawyer was placed by the great functions assigned to him. He stood before a tribunal around whose name and power were clustered the affections of the American people the high and holy sanctuary of the liberties of a free republic. He spoke in the presence of judges care fully culled from the learned and virtuous men of the nation, and set apart from the people as a civic priesthood, into whose minds no profane thought of power or of ambition might ever lawfully enter men whose lives were consecrated by peculiar dedication and solemn devotion to that highest and most ar duous exercise of intellect, the expounding of the sober ora cles of law. Chief, among these sat one, over whose manly form age had thrown its venerable tracery without marring its proportions, and upon whose intellectual forehead the storms that have lashed up the passions of contending parties and rocked th2 very battlements of the republic itself, have broken in exhausted fury, without ever shaking the equipoise of its own unmatched and unerring judgment, or dimming the fair sunshine of its serene front a sage who, through many a day of popular frenzy, has calmly looked down from his lofty seat upon the jarring people, and spoke the troubled waters into peace, and gave smooth seas again to the noble ship of state. Before such a tribunal did the advocate appear to discuss and settle the doctrines of great constitutional and internation al law ; to stay the erring arm of power ; to defend the weak and oppressed citizen, and to invoke the sturdy ge nius of American liberty to the rescue of the enthralled and humble victim of injustice. Most gallantly and nobly did he then sustain the hopes that were confided to him, and richly did he there win the imperishable garland of his fame ! 106 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. So exclusively was he addicted to the pursuit of profes sional duty that, as I have before remarked, there were no al lurements of political renown, though presented to him with every circumstance to attract his ambition, that could seduce him from his allotted path. He possessed qualities that would have placed him foremost among the most admired of our senates. His attainments, though adorned with an unusual stock of the beautiful in human knowledge, were also abun dant in the solid and useful things of life. His habits were those of calm and sifting deliberation : his temper was " nei ther splenetive or rash," but gentle, just and considerate; and his eloquence was more happily adapted to the moving of great minds and swaying the purposes of state, then even to the keen encounters of the bar. His integrity was of that scrupulous and self-denying kind that would have won the confidence of all parties, and commanded the respect of the most inveterate opponents. Yet so apparelled in virtues which may be deemed the rare jewels of honest states manship, he put by the hopes to which they might have point ed him, and pursued to the last the consistent aim of his first ambition. It is no exception to this remark that in the last presiden tial canvass he consented to allow his name to be presented to the citizens of the United States as a candidate for the chief magistracy of the Union. The nomination was made by a convention of delegates from a highly respectable portion of our fellow-citizens. As it was unsought by Mr. Wirt so was it equally unexpected. In his interpretation of the theory of our Government, the chief executive officer of the republic is a sta tion too august to be made the subject of individual solicita tion, and, for the same reason, its functions are too important to the common welfare to allow a patriot citizen to decline them, when the wishes of the people invite him to take the public suffrage. This in Mr. Wirt was a genuine, unaffected sentiment, and it was therefore with a sense of duty, almost invested with the sanctity of a religious obligation, that he WILLIAM WIRT. 107 signified his acceptance of the nomination. From my own knowledge of his feelings, on this occasion, I can most consci entiously affirm my belief, that, in yielding to the request of the convention, he felt that secret conviction of a painful sacri fice of comfort and tranquillity which every good man feels when constrained by the call of patriotism to devote his mind, his fortune or his life in arduous achievement for his country s good. As it was in this spirit that he accepted the nomina tion, so did he, in the same spirit, await the issue of the trial. Never did patriot of Rome or Greece, nor earnest champion, not less worthy, of our own early freedom, give himself to his country with a purer heart than did the distinguished man of whom we speak, on the occasion I have referred to ; and not among the thousands of his friends was there one who re ceived the tidings of his defeat with a calmer mind than he, or with so slight regret. It is grateful, in these days to summon up to our contemplation the character of such a man ; in these days, when bitter experience has instructed us to dis trust all who hold the high seats of power ; when the common profligacy of the selfish and venal politician has thrown the taint of a general suspicion over all who bear the appellation of public servants ; when the frequent treachery of the suc cessful demagogue has too often taught us to treat as mockery the professions of patriotism, and when the boasted virtue which our forefathers pronounced vital to republicanism has almost become a mere name of delusion it is a pleasant thing to cast our thoughts upon the pure footsteps of such a man as Wirt, and to witness the amiable renown which has encircled his unobtrusive career. It teaches us that the love of homely ind old-fashioned worth is not obliterated from the hearts of our countrymen, and that, in the great multitude of our peo ple, there is yet a solid mass of right thinking and plain deal ing men. To that firm phalanx of patriots, in our hour of ex tremest need, should disaster ever fall upon our luxuriant and proud over-arching shelter of liberty, we Inay appeal in the language of the poet 108 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. " Oh save our country, save a nation The chosen land, the last retreat of freedom, Amidst a broken world ; cast back thy view And trace from farthest times her old renown, Think of the blood that to maintain her rights And nurse her sheltering laws, hath flow d in battle, Think what cares, What vigilance, what toils, what bright contention In councils, camps and well-disputed senates It cost our generous ancestors, to raise A matchless plan of freedom ; whence we shine The happiest of mankind, the first of nations." The character of Mr. Wirt, as exhibited in private life, was most attractive. He was an attentive and affectionate father, husband and friend : indulgent to the faults of others, severe to his own ; sincere, generous and affable. He possessed, in a remarkable degree, that trait which has been called simplic ity of heart, it was single-mindedness, straight-forward can dor. His manners had the wayward playfulness of a boy, that won upon and infected with their own buoyancy every class of his associates, from the youngest to the oldest from the hum blest retainer about his person, or casual stranger, to the most eminent and most intimate. I have seen him at the close of a day of toil in the studies and duties of his profession, join a herd of school-boys with a spirit as. full of pranks as the light est truant among them. I have seen him among the elders of the land and in the group of the highest functionaries and gravest sages, throw around him the full influence of his dig nified and graceful presence, until it seemed to raise and illume the bearing and behavior even of that society. Lastly, he was a zealous and faithful Christian. In such a mind as his, so inquiring, so masterly, so discriminating, reli gion was the child of his judgment, not the creation of his pas sion. It was an earnest, abiding sense of truth, and showed itself in daily exercise and constant acknowledgment. With the sublime system of revelation resting ever in his thoughts, the Christian law hung like a tablet upon his breast, and duty WILLIAM WIET. 109 ever pointed her finger to the sculptured commands that were graven there to serve "him as a manual of practice. He loved old forms and old opinions, and, with something like a patri arch s reverence, he headed his little family flock on their Sunday walks to church : morning and evening he gathered them together and, on bended knee, invoked his Father s blessing on his household ; and at the daily meal bowed his calm and prophet-like figure over the family repast, to ask that grace of the Deity, on which his heart rested with its live liest hope, and to express that thankfulness which filled and engrossed his soul. Such was this man in the retirement of his domestic hearth, and thus did his affections, in that little precinct, bloom with the daily increasing virtues of love of family, friends, of his country and of his God. As he lived so did he die, giving lessons and examples of good, even to his latest breath ; the same composed, thought ful, cheerful and fearless man when treading on the brink of time, as when careering midway upon his pilgrimage, elate with hope and confident of power. But he is gone ! The silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern. " Yea, he hath finished ! For him there is no longer any future ; His life is bright bright without spot it was, And cannot cease to be. No ominous hour Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap. Far off is he, above desire and fear, No more submitted to the change and chance Of the unsteady planets." Long, it may be, before this community shall " look upon his like again." It has been our unhappy destiny to witness at this bar, with in the short space of some ten years gone, the extinguishment of many brilliant lights. One by one the stars of our renown have sunk into the great Western sea, from which, to our eyes, 110 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. they never shall again emerge. The fires of Martin, Harper, Pinckney, Winder and Wirt, have all been quenched in that vast flood ; and with their departed radiance has gone many a proud boast of Maryland. These were names, in their day, to call up the robust glory of our little State and to seat it beside the worthiest in the realms of intellect. Though these gifted children of our circumscribed soil have glided from among us, and now, in solemn succession, walk with solitary and noise less step the dark valley of the shadow of death, yet still do they live with us in a green and fond memory, and speak in the yet lingering echoes of their living voices speak wisdom and hope and encouragement to the present race. They beckon the youth of our times towards the path they trod, and point to the glorious rewards that hang within the reach of " midnight labor and holy emulation." GREEN MOUNT. Ill ADDEESS AT THE DEDICATION OF GREEN MOUNT CEMETERY, JULY 13TH, 1839. MY FRIENDS : We have been called together at this place to distinguish, by an appropriate ceremonial, the establishment of the Green Mount Cemetery. It is gratifying to perceive, in this large assemblage of the inhabitants of our city, a proof of the interest they take in the accomplishment of this design. To a few of our public-spirited citizens we are indebted for this laudable undertaking, and I feel happy in the opportunity to congratulate them upon the eminent suc cess with which their labors are likely to be crowned. It is a natural sentiment that leads man to the contempla tion of his final resting-place. In the arrangement of the world there is no lack of remembrances to remind us of dis solution. This unsteady navigation of life, with its adverse winds, its sunken rocks and secret shoals, its dangers of the narrow strait and open sea, is full of warning of shipwreck, and, even in its most prosperous conditions, awakens the mind to the perception that we are making our destined haven with an undesired speed. Childhood has its dream of destruction ; youth has its shudder at the frequent funereal pageant that obtrudes upon his gambols ; manhood courts acquaintance with danger as the familiar price of success, and old age learns to look upon death with a cheerful countenance and to hail him as a com panion. This theatre of life, is it not even more appropriately a theatre of death ? What is our title to be among the living, but a title derived from mortality ? That extinction which 112 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. tracked the footsteps of those who went before us and over took them, made room for us and brought us to this inheri tance of air and light : they who are to follow us will thank Death for their turn upon earth. He is the patron of pos terity, and the great provider for the present generation. We subsist by his labor ; we are fed by his hand ; to him we owe all this fabric of human production, these arts of civilization, these beneficent and beautifying toil, these wonder-working handicrafts and head-fancies, that have filled this world with the marvels of man s genius. From Death springs Necessity, and from Necessity all man s triumphs over nature. Look abroad and tell me what has brought forth this beautiful scheme of art which we call the world ; what has invented all this enginery of society ; what has appointed it for man to toil, and given these multiform rewards to his labor; why, with the rising sun, goes he forth cheerily to his vocation, and endures the heat and burden of the day with such good heart It is because Death has taught him to strive against Hunger and Want. Without such strife, this fair garden were but a horrid wilderness this populous array of Christian men but some scattered horde of starving cannibals. Again look abroad, and tell me what is this universal motion of the ele ments, this perpetual progress from seed-time to harvest, these silent workings of creation, and unceasing engenderments of new forms, what is this whole plan, but a mass of life ever springing from the compost of death, sensible, breathing essences, melting away like flakes of snow, millions in every moment, and out of their destruction new living things forever coming forth ? Look to our own race. Even as the forest O sinks to the earth under the sweep of the storm, or by the woodman s axe, or by the touch of Time, so our fellow-men fall before the pestilence, or by the sword, or in the decay of age. The dead a thousand-fold outnumber those that live : All that tread The globe, are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. GKEEN MOUNT. 113 In the midst of these tokens, do we stand in need of lect ures to remind us that we are but for a season, and that very soon we are to be without a shadow on this orb ? Child of the dust, answer ! Confess, as I know in your secret breathings you must, that in the watches of the night, when wakefulness has beset your pillow, or in the chance seclusion of the day, when toil has been suspended, nay, even in the very eager importunity of business, and often in the wildest moment of revelry, this question of death and his conditions has come unbidden to the mind, and with a strange familiarity of fellowship has urged its claim to be entertained in your meditations. Thus death grows upon us, and becomes, at last, a domestic comrade thought. Kind is it in the order of Providence that we are, in this wise, bade to make ourselves ready for that inevitable day when our bodies shall sleep upon the lap of our mother earth. Wise in us is it, too, to bethink ourselves of this in time, not only that we may learn to walk humbly in the presence of our Creator, but even for that lesser care, the due disposal of that visible remainder which is to moulder into dust after the spirit has returned to God who gave it. Though to the eye of cold philosophy there may be nothing in that remainder worthy of a monument, and though, in contrast with the heaven-lighted hopes of the Christian, it may seem to be but dross too base to merit his care, yet still there is an acknowledged longing of the heart that when life s calenture is over, and its stirring errand done, this apt and delicate machine by which we have wrought our work, this serviceable body whereof our ingenuity has found something to be vain, shall lie down to its long rest in some place agreeable to our living fancies, and be per mitted, in undisturbed quiet, to commingle with its parent earth. The sentiment is strong in my bosom, I doubt not it is shared by many, to feel a keen interest in the mode and circumstances of that long sleep which it is appointed to each and all of us to sleep. I do not wish to lie down in the crowded city. I would not be jostled in my narrow house, OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. much less have my dust give place to the intrusion of later comers : I would not have the stone memorial that marks my resting-place to be gazed upon by the business-perplexed crowd in their every-day pursuit of gain, and where they ply their tricks of custom. Amidst this din and traffic of the living is no fit place for the dead. My affection is for the country, that God-made country, where Nature is the pure first-born of the Divinity, and all the tokens around are of Truth. My tomb should be beneath the bowery trees, on some pleasant hill-side, within sound of the clear brattling brook ; where the air comes fresh and filled with the perfume of flowers ; where the early violet greets the spring, and the sweet-briar blooms, and the woodbine ladens the dew with its fragrance ; Where the shower and the singing bird, Midst the green leaves are heard where the yellow leaf of autumn shall play in the wind ; and where the winter snow shall fall in noiseless flakes and lie in unspotted brightness ; the changing seasons thus symboling forth, even within the small precincts of my rest, that birth and growth and fall which marked my mortal state, and, in the renovation of spring, giving a glad type of resurrection which shall no less surely be mine. I think it may be set down somewhat to the reproach of our country that we too much neglect this care of the dead. It betokens an amiable, venerating, and religious people, to see the tombs of their forefathers not only carefully preserved, but embellished with those natural accessories which display a thoughtful and appropriate reverence. The pomp of an overlabored and costly tomb scarcely may escape the criticism of a just taste ; that tax which ostentation is wont to pay to the living in the luxury of sculptured marble dedicated to the dead, often attracts disgust by its extravagant disproportion to the merits of its object ; but a becoming respect for those from whom we have sprung, an affectionate tribute to our GREEN MOUNT. 115 departed friends and the friends of our ancestors, manifested in the security with which we guard their remains, and in the neatness with which we adorn the spot where they are de posited, is no less honorable to the survivors than it is re spectful to the dead. "Our fathers," says an eloquent old writer, " find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors." It is a good help to these " short memories," and a more than pardonable vanity, to keep recollection alive by monuments that may attract the eye and arrest the step, long after the bones be neath them shall have become part of the common mould. I think we too much neglect the care of the dead. No one can travel through our land without being impressed with a disagreeable sense of our indifference to the adornment and even to the safety of the burial places. How often have I stopped to note the village graveyard, occupying a cheerless spot by the road-side ! Its ragged fence furnishing a scant and ineffectual barrier against the invasion of trespassing cattle, or beasts still more destructive : its area deformed with rank weeds, the Jamestown, the dock, and the mullen ; and for shade, no better furniture than some dwarfish, scrubby, in congruous tree, meagre of leaves, gnarled and ungraceful, rising solitary above the coarse, unshorn grass. And there were the graves, an unsightly array of naked mounds ; some with no more durable memorial to tell who dwelt beneath, than a decayed, illegible tablet of wood, or if better than this, the best of them with coverings of crumbling brick masonry and dislocated slabs of marble, forming, perchance, family groups, environed by a neglected paling of dingy black, too plainly showing how entirely the occupants had gone from the thoughts of their survivors. Not a pathway was there to in dicate that here had ever come the mourner to look upon the grave of a friend, or that this was the haunt of a solitary foot step bent hither for profitable meditation. I felt myself truly among the deserted mansions of the dead, and have turned from the spot to seek again the haunts of the living, out of 116 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. the very chill of the heart which such a dilapidated scene had cast upon me. Many such places of interment may be found in the country. It is scarce better in the cities. There is more expense, it is true, and more care for the tribute paid to mortality in the crowded city renders the habitations of its dead a more frequent resort. But in what concerns the garniture of these cemeteries, in all that relates to the embellishment appropriate to their character and their purpose, how much is wanting ! Examine around our own city. You shall find more than one graveyard enclosed with but the common post and rail fence and occupying the most barren spot of ground, in a suburb near to where the general offal of the town is strewed upon the plain and taints the air with its offensive exhalations. You shall observe it studded with tombs of sufficiently neat structure, but unsoftened by the shade of a single shrub or, if not entirely bare, still so naked of the simple ornament of tree and flower, as to afford no attraction to the eye, no solic itation to the footstep of the visitor. That old and touching appeal, siste viator, is made to the wayfarer from its desolate marbles in vain ; there is nothing to stop the traveller and wring a sigh from his bosom, unless it be to find mortality so cheaply dealt with in these uncheery solitudes. We have cemeteries better than these, where great expense has been incurred to give them greater security and more elaborate or nament ; but these too even the best of them are sadly repulsive to the feelings, from the air of overcrowded habita tion, and too lavish expenditure of marble and granite within their narrow limits. This press for space, the result of an under-estimate, in the infancy of the city, of what time might require, has compelled the exclusion of that rural adornment so appropriate to the dwellings of the dead, so appropriate because so pure and natural the deep shade, the verdant turf, the flower-enamelled bank, with their concomitants, the hum of bees and carol of summer birds. I like not these lanes of ponderous granite pyramids, these gloomy, unwin- GKEEN MOUNT. 117 do wed blocks of black and white marble, these prison-shaped walls, and that harsh gate of rusty iron, slow moving on its grating hinges ! I cannot affect this sterile and sunny solitude. Give me back the space, the quiet, the simple beauty and natural repose of the country ! The profitable uses of the Cemetery are not confined to the security it affords the dead : The living may find in it a treasure of wholesome instruction. That heart which does not seek communion with the grave, and dwell with calm and even pleasurable meditation on the change which nature s great ordinance has decreed, has laid up but scant provision against the weariness or the perils of this world s pilgrimage. " Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the ex tent of thy grave," is the solemn invocation which the de parted spirit whispers into the ear of the living man. The tomb is a faithful counsellor, and may not wisely be estranged from our view. It tells us the great truth that Death is not the Destroyer, but Time ; it counsels us that Time is our friend or foe as we ourselves fashion him, and it warns us to make a friend of Time for the sake of Eternity. That this instruction may be often repeated and planted deep in our minds, I would have the public burial-ground not remote from our habitations. It should be seated in some nook so peace ful and pleasant as to beguile the frequent rambler to its shades and win him to the contemplation of himself. And though it should not be far from the dwellings of men, yet neither should it be cheapened in their eyes by bordering too obviously on the path of their common daily outgoings. Screens of thick foliage should shut it out from the road-side, or reveal it only in such glimpses as might show the wayfarer the sequesterment of the spot, and raise in his mind a respect for the reverence with which the slumber of the dead has been secured. There should evergreens relieve the bleak landscape of winter, and blooming thickets render joyous the approach of spring. Among these should rise the monuments of the departed. Here, a lowly tablet, half hid beneath the 118 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. plaited vines, to tell of some quiet, unobtrusive spirit that, even in the grave, had sought the modest privilege of being not too curiously scanned by the world ; there, a rich column on the beetling brow of the hill, with its tasteful carvings and ambitious sculpture, to note the resting-place of some favorite of fame or fortune. At many an interval, peering through the shrubbery, the variously-wrought tombs should unfold to the eye of the observer a visible index to that world of char acter which death had subdued into silence and grouped together under these diversified emblems of his power. There, matron and maid, parent and child, friend and brother, should be found so associated that their very environments should communicate something of the story of their lives. Every thing around him should inspire the visitor with the sentiment that he walked among the relics of a generation dear to its survivors. The sanctity and the silence of the place, with its quiet walks, its retired seats beneath overhang ing boughs, its brief histories chronicled in stone, and its moral lessons uttered by speaking marble, all these should allure him to meditate upon that great mystery of the grave, and teach him to weigh the vocations of this atom of time against the concerns of that long eternity upon which these tenants of the tomb had already entered. What heart-warn ings would he gather in that meditation against the entice ments of worldly favor ! How soberly would he learn to reckon the chances of slippery ambition, the rewards of for tune, and the gratifications of sense I We misjudge the world if we deem that even the most thoughtless of mankind have not a chord in their hearts to vibrate to the solemn harmony of such an atmosphere as this. There is no slave of passion so dull to the persuasions of conscience, no worldling so bold in defying the proper instinct of his manhood, but would sometimes steal to a place like this to discourse with his own heart upon the awful question of futurity. Here would he set him down at the base of some comrade s recently erected tomb, and make a reckoning of his GEEEIST MOUNT. 119 own fleeting day, and then, with resolve of better life, a re solve which even the habit of his heedless career, perchance, has not power to stifle go forth stoutly bent on its achieve ment. Hither, in levity would stray many a careless footstep, but not in levity depart. The chance-caught warning of the tomb would attemper the mind to a sober tone of virtue, and long afterwards linger upon the memory. To this resort, the. heart perplexed with worldly strivings and wearied with the appointments of daily care, would fly for the very relief of that lesson on the vanity of human pursuits which this mute scene would teach with an eloquence passing human utterance. Such considerations as these have not been without their weight in prompting the enterprise which we are assembled this day to commemorate. Our friends, to whom the city is indebted for this design, have with great judgment and suc cess, in the selection of the place and in the organization of their plan, sought to combine the benefit of these moral influ ences with the external or physical advantages of such an institution. This Cemetery, like those which suggested its es tablishment, will be maintained under regulations adapted to the preservation of every public observance of respect which the privacy and the sanctity of the purposes to which it is dedicated may require. Indeed, such institutions of them selves appeal so forcibly to the better instincts of our nature, and raise up so spontaneously sentiments of respect in the human bosom, as to stand in need of little rigor in the en forcement of the laws necessary to guard them against viola tion. The experience of our people in their usefulness is limited to but few years ; yet, brief as is the term, it is worthy of observation that no public establishment seems to have ex cited a more affectionate interest in the mind of the country, or enlisted a readier patronage than this mode of providing for the repose of the dead. Within the last ten years, the cemeteries of Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill have been con structed. They already constitute the most attractive objects to the research of the visitor in the environs of the cities to 120 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. which they belong. Scarce an inhabitant of Boston or Phila delphia who does not testify to the pride with which he regards the public cemetery in his neighborhood. No traveller, with the necessary leisure on his hands, is content to quit those cities without an excursion to Mount Auburn or Laurel Hill ; and the general praise of the public voice is expressed in every form in which the home dweller or the stranger can find utterance to pay a tribute to these beautiful improvements of the recent time. This Cemetery of Green Mount, constructed on the same plan, may advantageously compare with those to which I have alluded. It is more accessible than Mount Auburn; it is more spacious than that in the neighborhood of Philadelphia ; and in point of scenery, both as respects the improvement of the grounds, and the adjacent country, it is, at least, equal to either. I know not where the eye may find more pleasing landscapes than those which surround us. Here, within our enclosures, how aptly do these sylvan embellishments harmo nize with the design of the place ! this venerable grove of ancient forest ; this lawn shaded with choicest trees ; that green meadow, where the brook creeps through the tangled thicket begemmed with wild flowers ; these embowered alleys and pathways hidden in shrubbery, and that grassy knoll stud ded with evergreens and sloping to the cool dell where the fountain ripples over its pebbly bed : all hemmed in by yon natural screen of foliage which seems to separate this beauti ful spot from the world and devote it to the tranquil uses to which it is now to be applied. Beyond the gate that guards these precincts we gaze upon a landscape rife with all the charms that hill and dale, forest-clad heights and cultivated fields may contribute to enchant the eye. That stream which northward cleaves the woody hills, comes murmuring to our feet, rich with the reflections of the bright heaven and the green earth ; thence leaping along between its granite banks, hastens toward the city whose varied outline of tower, stee ple, and dome, gilded by the evening sun and softened by the GREEN MOUNT. 121 haze, seems to sleep in perspective against the southern sky ; and there, fitly stationed within our view, that noble column, destined to immortality from the name it bears, lifts high above the ancient oaks that crown the hill, the venerable form of the Father of his Country, a majestic image of the death lessness of virtue. Though scarce an half hour s walk from yon living mart, where one hundred thousand human beings toil in their noisy crafts, here the deep quiet of the country reigns, broken by no ruder voice than such as marks the tranquillity of rural life, the voice of " birds on branches warbling," the lowing of dis tant cattle, and the whetting of the mower s scythe. Yet tid ings of the city not unpleasantly reach the ear in the faint murmur which at intervals is borne hither upon the freshen ing breeze, and more gratefully still in the deep tones of that cathedral bell, Swinging slow, with sullen roar, as morning and noon, and richer at even tide, it flings its peal ing melody across these shades with an invocation that might charm the lingering visitor to prayer. To such a spot as this have we come to make provision for our long rest ; and hither, even as drop follows drop in the rain, shall the future generations that may people our city, find their way and sleep at our sides. It may be a vain fancy, yet still it is not unpleasing, that in that long future our pres ent fellowships may be preserved, and that the friends and kindred who now cherish their living association shall not be far separated in the tomb. Here is space for every denomi nation of religious society, leaving room for each to preserve its appropriate ceremonies ; and here, too, may the city set apart a quarter for public use. That excellent custom, the more excellent because it is so distinctively classical in its ori gin, of voting a public tomb to eminent citizens, a custom yet unknown to us, I trust will, in the establishment of this ceme- 6 122 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. tery, find an argument for its adoption : that here may be recorded the public gratitude to a public benefactor, and in some conspicuous division of these grounds, the stranger may read the history of the statesman, the divine, the philanthro pist, the soldier or the scholar whose deeds have improved or whose fame adorned the city. In such monuments virtue finds a cheering friend, youth a noble incentive, and the heart of every man a grateful topic of remembrance. I mistake our fellow-citizens if it would not gratify them to see their public authorities adopt this custom. There is something in the spectacle of a living genera tion employed in the selection of their own tombs that speaks favorably for their virtue. It testifies to a rational, reflecting piety ; it tells of life unhaunted by the terrors of death, of sober thought and serene reckoning of the past day. Our present meditations have not unseasonably fallen upon these topics, and I would fain hope that they will leave us some what the wiser at our parting. The very presence of this scene, in connection with the purpose that brought us hither, sheds a silent instruction on the heart. How does it recall the warning of scripture, " Go to now, ye that say to-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain ; whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life ? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then van- isheth away." This grove now untenanted by a single lodger, this upland plain and all these varied grounds, in the brief space of a few generations, shall become a populous dwelling- place of the dead. Hither then will come the inmates of yon rapidly-increasing city, in their holiday walks, to visit our tombs, and gaze upon the thick-strewed monuments that shall meet them on every path. Among these some calm moralist of life, some thoughtful observer of man and his aims, will apply himself here to study the past his past, and while he lingers over the inscriptions that shall tell him of this busy crowd who so intently ply what we deem the important labors GREEN MOUNT. 123 of to-day, alas, how shrunk and dwarfed shall we appear in his passing comment ! A line traced by the chisel upon the stone shall tell all, and more perhaps than posterity may be concerned to know, about us and our doings. Which of us shall reach a second generation in that downward journey of fame ? How many of these events which now fill our minds, as matters belonging to the nation s destiny, shall stand re corded before the eye of that aftertime ? How much of our personal connection with present history, these strivings of ours to be noted in the descent of time, these clamorous invoca tions of posterity, these exaggerations of ourselves and our deeds shall be borne even to the beginning of the next half century ? Here is a theme for human vanity ! Let it teach us humility, and in humility that wisdom which shall set us to so ordering our lives, that in our deaths those who survive us may be instructed how to win the victory over the grave. Then shall our monuments be more worthy to be cherished by future generations, and the common doom of oblivion, per chance, be averted by better remembrancers than these le gends on our tombs. In this anticipation we may find some thing not ungrateful in the thought, that while all mortal be ings march steadily onward " to cold obstruction," we sink into our gradual dust upon a couch chosen by ourselves, with many memorials of friendship and esteem clustered around our remains, and that there we shall sleep secure until the last summons shall command the dead to arise, and call us into the presence of a merciful God. It does not fall to my province to pursue these reflections within the confines to which they so plainly lead us Such topics belong to a more solemn forum, and a better provided orator : I dare not invade their sacred field. My task re quired no more than that I should present those public con siderations which have induced the establishment of this Cem etery ; the subject has naturally brought me to the verge of that sublime mystery, from which, in reverence only, I turn back my steps. 124 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. In closing my duties at this point, I may assume, without transcending my assigned privilege, to speak a parting word. Our thoughts have been upon the grave our discourse has been of death. It is good for us to grow familiar with this theme ; but only good, as weighing its manifold conditions, we deduce from the study its urgent persuasions to a life of pi- ety and virtue. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of Death, Thou go not like the quarry slave at night, Scourg d to his dungeon; but sustain d and sooth d By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him and lies down to pleasant dreams GEORGE CALVEET. 125 DISCOUESE ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE CALVERT, THE FIRST LORD BALTIMORE: MADE BY JOHN P. KENNEDY, BEFORE THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, DECEM BER 9, 1845. MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen : Looking to the objects contemplated by this Society and its ability to attain them, and to the earnestness with which it has under taken its office, I would venture to foretell that Maryland will find frequent occasion to applaud its labors, and to acknowl edge much good service done in a good cause. Its establishment is a timely and most appropriate tribute rendered by the City of Baltimore to the State. The munificence of our city will never find a more honorable object for its out lay, its intelligence a more dignified subject for its application, the patriotism of our city a more dutiful employment than that which is presented to its regard in the purpose and pro ceeding of this association. Baltimore indeed owed it to that community of which she is the social centre, to the intellect ual accomplishment which dwells within her own halls, and owed, too, I think, to the name she bears a name which has not yet been illustrated as fully as its historic value deserves to set herself diligently to the task of exploring and preserv ing, as far as means exist, the past and present materials which belong to the long neglected history of Maryland. We have now addressed ourselves to this task : taken the lead in it, as it was proper Baltimore should. For two years past this Society has very intelligently, and not without some 126 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. good fruits, pursued the intent of its organization. We mean to persevere ; and we now invoke our townsmen to stand by us, to give us countenance and aid, substantial contribution,, to help us to rear a monument which shall tell to our own peo ple, to our sister cities in the Union, and to all the world, that in the cause of letters and the elegant arts the truest wit nesses of high civilization and refinement, we fully under stand and perform the obligation which our position has cast upon us. I think I do the citizens of Baltimore no more than justice when I express my conviction that, for the promoting of a purpose so commended to their approbation, appealing so directly to their proper pride in the adornment of this their own homestead, and above all, so grateful to that sense of duty which finds its gratification in exalting the glory of our country, by making known the virtues of its ancestry I think I do them no more than justice in believing that their co-oper ation, support and encouragement will be administered to the objects of this Society with that lavish hand and honorable good-will which become the men of an enlightened city, whose estimate of liberal art and science keeps pace with its well-deserved prosperity. Our State has most worthy and urgent motive to call upon her children that they do not suffer her story to perish. A good story it is, and an honest. Much of it is, to this day, un told : unfortunately, may never be told ; the material is be yond our reach. Much is still within our reach, though fast dissolving into dust. This society has come into existence just in time to rescue some of the fragments of our youthful annals from irrecoverable oblivion ; too late to save the whole. Would that some earlier generation had conceived the happy thought of addressing itself to the same task, when full stores of the treasures of our young Antiquity might have been gar nered into a magazine safe enough to deliver them unmutilated into our hands ! Once secure upon the threshold of this age, so noted for its zeal of inquiry, its love of illustration, and for its multitudinous press, we might have promised these annals GEORGE CALVERT. 127 of the past a safe transmission to all posterity. Whatsoever relics may now come to us, we may hope to speed them to wards that farthest futurity to which the ambition of history aspires : no jot diminished in what they bring to our hands, enlarged rather, and made more veritable by careful collation and exposition. This charge, then, these older, maturer days prefer against that unskilled, neglectful Former Time, which had not the wit to see, nor the heart to value the riches of our Maryland birth day, and of its simple-minded days of infancy : this charge we make against that Former Time, that it suffered precious chronicles to moulder in damp and forgotten crypts, and not less precious legends to die with the brains that nursed them. Let this arraignment of our thoughtless and scant Antiquity go to the heart of this present time, by way of exhortation to incite it to the labor still of redeeming what is not yet ut terly gone. The history of our American settlement has an interest of a different character from that of all other history. It is not the interest of narrative nor of personal fortune, in any great degree, nor of important or striking combinations of events. It is chiefly, almost exclusively, that which belongs to the study of the development of moral power, the contemplation of great results springing from obscure and apparently feeble causes. It shows us men deliberately planning the founda tions of free government ; men self-dependent, endowed with the energy of homely good sense and educated to their task, if not by a wise experience in the arts of good government, at least by a painful knowledge of the evils which flow from the neglect of them ; men springing from the lap of a high civiliza tion, and called to their labor at a period when the mind of the nation to which they belonged was stirred by an extraordi nary impulse to forward this achievement, and which was able to communicate the loftiest spirit to those who undertook it. The annals of this settlement are generally clear and au thentic. They are, in greater part, preserved in official State 128 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. papers, or in memoirs scarcely less to be respected. The deeds of the actors are often written in full detail. There is little room for legendary exaggeration. The men who engaged to lead these enterprises were as brave, as wise, as capable as any builders of empire in any past time. More capable, more wise, we may say, than the founders of older dynasties, being enlightened men of an enlightened age, taught in all that Christianity could teach, and not less brave and hardy than the hardiest and bravest of antiquity. Still their history supplies no great attraction by its inci dents. It falls too much into the character of meagre individ ual memoir, has too little of that pomp of scenery, decoration, prestige, and grouping which charm in the history of the old nations of the world. The fortunes of a handful of adventur ers tempting, for the first time, the vast desert of waters, and flying upon the wings of stormy winds to the unknown haven of an inhospitable coast, and finally planting a home in the wilderness, where no foot-print was seen that was not hostile, may furnish pictures for the painter s study, and warm the poet s fancy, but they will be found to want the breadth, variety and significance necessary to render them the most engaging theme for the historian. I confess I weary somewhat over these details of Indian strategy and cunning ; these sad shifts to supply the wants of a ship s company seeking for food ; these mutinies and miserable dissensions bred by meaner spirits in capable of enduring the griefs of their solitude ; these steal thy ambuscades ; these murders and treasons which make up so much of the staple of early colonial story. He must be gifted with a happy skill who, with such materials only, can weave a tale which shall make men fond of coming back to its perusal. Nevertheless, there is a peculiar philosophical interest in the observation of this course of empire ; an interest abiding more in the theme than in the particulars of its illustration. Among many speculations, we read in it the solution of a prob lem of high import : What are the tendencies, longings, GEOKGE GAL VERT. 129 instincts of the human family, when committed to the destiny of a new world, and challenged to the task of constructing government : especially what are these instincts in some cer tain races of that family ? Marvellously has that problem been solved over this wide Western Continent ; is now continu ally solving. Marvellously do we still go on demonstrating that problem, and are yet very far from the end of it. Sur vey that wide field, bounded north and south by Labrador and Terra del Fuego ; and of all the millions that there inhabit, how surely shall you recognize them by their several social polities, not less express and notable than their individual temperament, complexion, and outward form ! We hear much of late of the Anglo-Saxon Norman-Saxon, or Dano-Saxon, rather should we call him marching to fulfil a destiny. He was the last man who entered this broad field : he is now, in less than three centuries, master of all. By his sufferance, only, does the descendant of the Goth, the Frank, or native man of America cultivate a nook of land. Imperious lord of the continent, he waits but upon his own pleasure to circumvent or conquer all. Time had rolled through fifty recorded centuries numbered in human annals, and along that track History had duly set up monuments to mark the progression of the sons of men from the Genesis to the Flood from the Flood to the Dispersion from the Dispersion to the Birth of the Saviour and thence right onward, through many a lesser epoch to the Discovery of the New world. This last era, far from being the least noteworthy in the series, was, in fact, the opening of one of the most momentous chapters in the book of Human Destiny. It was the revealing of a second creation, full of young lustihood, to an overwrought and strife-tormented old one. It contained surface and sup ply for tribes more numerous than all that dwelt upon the East ern Hemisphere. It gave to man a fresh nursing mother, into whose lap he might fling his exhausted children with full security that there they should find the aliment to rear them 6* 130 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. to a mighty manhood. It offered him another starting-point in the career of civilization ; laid open to him new and genial labors ; awakened new impulses in his heart ; filled his mind with new conceptions of duty, policy, self-advancement. We are somewhat struck in the history of this great event, that it did not at once agitate the public mind with such emo tions. Looking to the inherent grandeur of the Discovery, and its obvious relation to the condition of mankind, we have reason to be surprised at the tardiness of men to avail them selves of it. One would suppose that among the multitudes cribbed within the confines of Europe, chafed with the harness of ever-flagrant war, and sadly experienced in its desolation and its hopeless poverty, thousands would have been found at once to supply a steady stream of population to these trans- Atlantic solitudes, most happy to accept the invitation of Providence to exchange hunger and strife for peace and plenty. Nearly a century, however, passed away before coloniza tion and settlement began to make an effective movement. The most significant influences over the fate of mankind are not the most visible to agitate the surface of human affairs. As great strength is often marked by repose, so great events often work out their effects unnoted in a silent lapse of time. It has been said, " Though our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour, no hammer in the Horologe of Time peals through the universe to proclaim that there is a change from Era to Era." In comparative silence did this great era unfold itself slowly through a hundred years. A hundred years, after the voyages of Columbus and Cabot, were given to enterprises, with but few exceptions, of mere ex ploration: blind struggles to get deeper insight into this world of wonders. The Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Flor entine, the Portuguese, were the navigators. Until the voyage of Frobisher, in 1576, England even then a predominant power on the ocean had but little share in this great work. North of the Gulf of Mexico, no colony had been planted during all this century, except the small settlement of Jacques GEORGE (3ALVERT. 131 Cartier in Canada. Ribault had made an unsuccessful effort in Florida ; and Sir Walter Raleigh a still more unfortunate one to plant Virginia. This was all that the sixteenth century contributed in the way of settlement to make the Discovery useful to mankind. It is quite remarkable that England should have done so little. But the seventeenth century came with a fresh and sudden ardor of adventure, and was distinguished by a steady, syste matic pursuit of the policy of colonization. During that and the succeeding age, America became incorporated into the po litical relations of Europe, became a well recognized power in the adjustment of the interests of States, supplied the com merce, even partook of the wars of the Old World, and finally matured those plans of social polity, which have since had such visible and authoritative influence in giving to mankind new perceptions of their own rights, and new views of the pur poses and obligations of government. The general scheme and progress of our colonization ex hibits to us a great historical Epic. It had its age of adven ture, its age of commerce, and its age of religious impulse : and there predominated throughout its entire action linking the whole together, and imparting to it what we may call its mystical and predestined completeness a very visible con spiracy of means to afford mankind the experience and enjoy ment of a peculiar trans- Atlantic system of empire, differing in its essential features from all established polities We may discern in it the dawning of a new consciousness of higher temporal destiny for man ; the first movement towards the es tablishment of social organization on a plan to diffuse power and the faculty of self-advancement among the great masses of the people, to a degree never before thought of, that plan not altogether defined in the conceptions of those first en gaged in the exploit, but gradually transpiring with the course of events, and finally taking its appointed shape under the re sistless control of circumstances which Providence seems to have made the guide to this grand and beneficent end. 132 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. In the first of these periods, that age of adventure, men seem to have been impelled by the spirit of an excited knight-errantry. Before them lay a world of novelties. The path that led to it was beset by dangers to allure the pride of the daring. The field of their labor was full of marvels to captivate the heart of the credulous. Renown awaited the explorer who could bring new contributions to the stock of foreign miracles which so charmed that wonder-loving time. Many courageous spirits enlisted in this quest of fame. They brought home tidings of nations gorgeous in gold and silver, and precious stones. Riches fineless, in their report, lay open to the brave hand that should be first stretched forth to win them. The ear of Christendom was enthralled by tales, which we should think now too light even for the credulity of child hood, of an imaginary city, sparkling with more than Arabian magnificence ; of mysterious fountains, capable of renewing youth in the pulse of decrepit age ;* of relics of ancient gen erations, whose abodes rivalled the glories of Heliopolis or * " It was not," says Irving, in a note to his Narrative of the Ad ventures of Juan Ponce de Leon, in quest of the Miraculous Foun tain, " the credulous minds of voyagers and adventurers alone that were heated by these Indian traditions and romantic fables. Men of learning and eminence were likewise beguiled by them ; witness the following extract from the second decade of Peter Martyr, addressed to Leo X., then bishop of Rome : " Among the islands on the north side of Hispaniola, there is one about 335 leagues distance, as they say which have searched the same, in which is a continual spring of running water, of such mar vellous virtue, that the water thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young again. And here I must make protesta tion to your holiness not to think this to be said lightly or rashly, for they have so spread this rumor for a truth throughout all the court, that not only all the people, but also many of them whom wisdom or fortune hath divided from the common sort, think it to be true ; but, if you will ask my opinion herein, I will answer that I will not at tribute so great power to nature, but that God hath no less reserved this prerogative to himself than to search the hearts of men." Voy ages of Companions of the Columbus, p. 314. GEOEGE CALVERT. 133 Thebes. Inflamed by such visions, the cavaliers of the six teenth century launched their barks upon the rough Atlantic and sped to its farther shore, with resolve to carve their crests upon this magnificent continent : Knights-errant of the sea, a romantic, wave-tempting chivalry, bred to the courtesies which the fanciful gallantry of the court of Elizabeth held up to admiration in Raleigh and Essex, Effingham and Howard, yet brave as the old Norse Sea Kings, and credulous as chil dren. Such is the argument and these the personages of the first book of this wonderful Epic. Illusions like these could not long endure. The age of commercial action came, with its practi cal sense and sober judgment of realities, to measure and gauge the new continent by the most unromantic of all standards. The astute London merchant followed in the wake of the sol dier enthusiast, and set himself to the task of computing what America was capable of yielding to the enlargement of trade. This computation of the practicable, ever, in the end, the most effective friend of civilization, soon began, though not without many drawbacks, to produce its good fruits in the en terprise which it fostered and controlled. The search of El Dorado was abandoned : the fountain of Bimini was forgot ten : the emigrant was provided with axe and plough, and af ter some severe trial and disappointment, was taught the les son that competence, and, in the end, affluence were to be won by diligent cultivation of the soil ; were, in no wise, to be hoped for in rambling on the search of mines of gold and precious stones, in sacking cities or laying waste the territory of weak barbarians. Religion, as I have said, also had its share in the progress of colonization. Fanaticism had reared a bloody ensign over the fields of Europe. The Thirty Years War, the civil broils of England, the murderous dissensions of Ireland, the univer sal intolerance of jarring sectaries, wrought such distraction, that thousands, in despair of peace at home, gathering their wives and children, their friends and servants together, sought 134 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. this new sky and these rough shades, with scarce other hope or purpose but to enjoy that unmolested worship which was denied them in the temples of their native land. This is a bare outline of the history of American settle ment. I have sketched it off in this rapid form of review, by way of introduction to a topic which it was my design to pre sent to your attention this evening. My purpose is to offer some views of the original settlement of Maryland, connected with the character of the founder of the State. The theme is not unfamiliar either to this society or to this auditory. It has recently, more than once, invoked the labor of accom plished minds among us. I trust, however, that in recurring to it, I shall not be found to weary your patience, as I venture to hope in what I have to say, I shall not be led to repeat after those who have better said, what it fell in their way to discuss, than I could hope to do were my reflections conducted into the same channel. Maryland was originally planted and grew up into impor tance as a colony under the genial impulses proper to the best days of that commercial era of which I have spoken. The original settlement partook, in no degree, of the illusions of romantic adventure. Nor did it owe its conception, either to religious persecution, or to that desire which is supposed to have influenced other colonies to form a society dedicated to the promotion of a particular worship This, I am aware, is contrary to a very generally received opinion. It is my pur pose, in what I am about to offer, to produce some proofs of the assertions I have just made. This province, I think I shall show, was founded, chiefly, in accordance with a liberal plan to erect a community on this continent, which, while it should afford a happy home to those who might make it their abode, securing to them all the privileges of the most favored subjects of the British crown, aimed, at the same time, to promote the objects of a wise and beneficent commercial speculation. The merit of this plantation is due to Sir George Calvert, the first Lord GEORGE CALVERT. 135 Baltimore. There is no man distinguished by so large and active a participation in the colonial history of this country of whom so few memorials remain in published records. It is, in part, the reproach of our State, that so little is known of him. For there is good reason to believe that manuscripts and other relics of his history exist, which have not been brought to our notice on this side of the Atlantic.* We may hope that to * Wood, in the Atliense Oxonienses, refers to the following writ ings of Calvert: Carmen Funebre in D. Hen. Untonum, ad Gallos bis legatum, Printed 1596: Parliamentary Speeches: Various Letters of State: The Answer of Thomas Tell Troth : The Practice of Princes, and Lam entations of the Kirk, Printed London, 1642. He also, says Wood, wrote something concerning Maryland. The Sir Henry Unton above referred to, is better known as Sir Henry Umpton, who, being sent by Elizabeth as Ambassador to France, was somewhat celebrated for his chivalrous bearing, accord ing to the fashion of that time, 1592, in resenting a supposed insult offered by the Duke of Guise to the Queen. He sent the Duke the following challenge : " For as much as lately, in the lodging of my Lord Du Mayne, and in public elsewhere, impudently, indiscreetly, and over boldly, you spoke badly of my sovereign, whose sacred person here, in this coun try, I represent : to maintain both by word and weapon her honor (which never was called in question among people of honesty and virtue) ; I say you have wickedly lied, in speaking so basely of my sovereign ; and you shall do nothing else but lie whenever you shall dare to tax her honor. Moreover, that her sacred person (being one of the most complete and virtuous princesses that live in the world), ought not to be evil spoken of by the tongue of such a perfidious traitor to her law and country as you are. And, hereupon, I do defy you, and challenge your person to mine, with such manner of arms as you shall like or choose, be it either on horseback or on foot. Nor would I have you to think any inequality of person between us, I being issued of as great a race and noble house (every way) as your self. So, assigning me an indifferent place, I will there maintain my words and the lie which I gave you, and which you should not en dure if you have any courage at all in you. If you consent not to meet me hereupon, I will hold you, and cause you generally to be held, for the arrantest coward and most slanderous slave that lives in France. I expect your answer." 136 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. the research of this Society, our State may hereafter become indebted for their production and publication. According to Anthony Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, Calvert was born in 1582, at Kipling, in the Chapelry of Bol- ton, in Yorkshire, and was the son of Leonard Calvert and Alice, daughter of John Crossland. Fuller, with more proba bility, I think, dates his birth in the year 1580. The author of the Worthies of England was his contemporary, though thirty years his junior, and, it is of some moment to my argu ment to remark, was obviously not personally acquainted with him. Both from Wood and Fuller we learn that in 1597, Calvert took a bachelor s degree at Oxford, and then visited the continent of Europe to complete his studies, and procure the advantages of travel, as was customary to young men of birth and fortune at that period. It is said that he attracted the regard of Sir Robert Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, afterwards Earl of Salisbury : a fact that we may suppose he designed to acknowledge in the name giv en to his eldest son. This son, Cecil, was born in 1606, as I find from an original portrait engraving of him in my posses sion for which I am indebted to a friend, a valuable member of this Society. This engraving enables us to fix the marriage of Calvert about the year 1604-5 hi 8 twenty-third or twenty- Sir Henry died in the French camp in 159-6, and his body being brought to London, was removed to Farringdon, and buried there on the 8th day of July of that year. The elegy or Carmen Funebre above referred to, was written by Calvert, at a very early age, and was most probably a college exercise. See Fuller s Worthies, vol. i. p. 131. It is said by Belknap, that Calvert " left something respecting America i n writing, but it does not appear that it was ever printed." I find also a reference by Bozman, vol. i. 240, to the Bibliotheca Americana, published in London, 1789, whi-ch mentions a MS., en titled " Account of the Settlement of Newfoundland, by Sir George Calvert." Some insight may perhaps be obtained to a portion of these writ ings, by an examination of the Maryland Papers, in the office of the Plantations in London, referred to frequently by Chalmers. See also the Stafford Papers. GEORGE CALVERT. 137 fifth year, as we compute it according- to the different dates of Wood and Fuller. He married Anne, the daughter of George Mynne, of Hertfordshire, and granddaughter of Sir Thomas Wroth, of Durance, in Enfield, Middlesex a gentleman of some distinction in his time. About the year 1606, he experienced a substantial proof of the prime-minister s friendship, in the gift of an appoint ment to the office of under or private secretary to the minister himself, which he held for several years. Three years afterwards 1609 his name appears as one of the patentees in the new charter, which was then given to the company for planting Virginia ; and I find it again enu merated in Captain Smith s list of the members of that company in 1620, showing that during all this interval he was interested in the settlement of that colony. The Earl of Salisbury died in 1612, after which event Cal- vert seems to have enjoyed a liberal share of the favor and re gard of King James, who, in 1617, promoted him to the post of clerk of the Privy Council, and invested him with the hon or of knighthood. Two years later, 1619, the king appointed him principal Secretary of State as the successor to Sir Thom as Lake ; which place he held until 1624, when he resigned it, according to Fuller, for the following reason : " He freely confessed himself to the king that he was then become a Ro man Catholic, so that he must be wanting to his trust or vio late his conscience in discharging his office. This, his inge nuity," adds Fuller, " so highly affected king James that he continued him privy councillor all his reign, as appeareth in the council books, and soon after created him Lord Baltimore, of Baltimore in Ireland." As a further testimony of the bounty of his sovereign, it is recorded of him that James gave him a grant of lands in Ire land,* and also- a pension of one thousand pounds. " During *"Tlie King being given to understand that divers towns and lands within the late plantation of Longford, amounting to about two thousand three hundred and four acres, remained in his hands 138 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. his being Secretary," says Fuller, " he had a patent to him and his heirs, to be Absolutus Dominus et Proprietarius, with the royalties of a Count Palatine, of the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland. Here he built a fair house in Ferryland, and spent five-and-twenty thousand pounds in advancing the plantation thereof. Indeed, his public spirit," the biographer continues, " consulted not his private profit, but the enlarge ment of Christianity and the king s dominions. * The settlement in Newfoundland, alluded to in this extract, was made in 1621 ; in which year, according to the account of Oldmixon, in his British Empire in America,! Sir George Calvert sent Captain Wynn thither with a small colony. In 1622, Captain Wynn was reinforced with an additional num ber of colonists. The charter or grant, however, for this plan tation, it is said, upon some doubtful and rather obscure testi mony, bears date of the twenty-first year of the King, which would assign it to the year 1623. After the death of James, which was in 1625, Lord Baltimore went twice to Avalon. " Here," says Fuller again, " when Monsieur de PArade, with three men of war, sent from the King of France, had reduced our English fishermen to great extremity, this lord, with two ships, manned at his own charge, chased away the French man, relieved the English, and took sixty of the French pris- undisposed of, he conferred the same on Sir George Calvert, his prin cipal Secretary, as a person worthy of his royal bounty, and one that would plant and build the same according to his late instructions for the better furtherance and strengthening of the said plantation." The grant was accordingly made 18th February, 1621. This patent Calvert "surrendered to the King 12th February, 1624 (1625 accord ing to the present calendar), and had a re*-grant thereof in fee-simple . dated at Westminster, llth March following, to hold as the Castle of Dublin in free and common soccage, by fealty only for all other rents, with the erection of the premises in the Barony of Longford into the manor of Baltimore, and those in the Barony of Rathlyne into the manor of Ulford, with the usual privileges of Courts, Parks, free warren, etc." London Magazine, June, 1768. * Worthies of England, vol. iii. p. 418. \ Bozman s Maryland, vol. i. p. 240, note GEORGE CALVEKT. 139 oners." It is related by Oldmixon and others, that Lord Baltimore removed his family to Ferryland, and resided there some few years. This establishment being found to be tin- genial, both in climate and soil, being subject to great an noyance from the French, and withal exceedingly expensive, Lord Baltimore finally abandoned it, and turned his thoughts upon settlement in a milder latitude, and on a more kindly soil. He was a member, as we have seen, of the Virginia Com pany, had been a member for eleven years, and, perhaps, longer : besides this, as Secretary of State, Chalmers tells us he was officially one of the Committee of Council for the affairs of the plantations. We may presume, therefore, that he was fully acquainted with the proceedings of the Virginia company, and well versed in all that belonged to the subject of colonization. Thus qualified for his enterprise, he turned his attention towards Virginia, with an undivulged purpose, as we may suppose from what afterwards occurred, to examine the regions within the charter of that plantation, which had not yet been settled. Accordingly, in 1628, he visited Vir ginia in person. It has been said that he was received very ungraciously by the assembly of that colony, who directed the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to be tendered to him and his followers. This incident would seem to show that the as sembly did not look upon Lord Baltimore in the light of a mere casual visitor ; that they suspected his intentions in re gard to settlement, and were jealous of them : that, actuated by this sentiment, they subjected him to what amounted al most to an indignity, in requiring him to take the oaths ; requiring him, who had been a Secretary of State, who was one of their own patentees in the London Company, and who was a public-spirited nobleman, somewhat distinguished for his enterprise in the cause of colonization ; who, in addi tion to all this, was on the best terms with the reigning sovereign at home. With a proper sense of self-respect, Lord Baltimore refused to take the oaths, or to allow his serv- 140 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ants to take them, and very soon afterwaids departed from the James River, to pursue a much more agreeable voyage up the Chesapeake, in quest of the unoccupied territory, to which his thoughts had most probably been directed from the first. Under these circumstances, he entered the Potomac, examined the country upon its left bank, and projected his settlement of the province of Maryland. I need not relate by what steps he contrived to secure the grant for this province. It was clearly within the limits of the Virginia charter ; parts of it were actually settled Kent Island especially ; yet he had influence and address to obtain the grant from Charles the First. I need not relate either what great dissatisfaction this grant gave to the colonists of Virginia to those very persons who had so uncivilly exacted the oaths of allegiance. We of Maryland, at least, have no reason to regret that this pristine and most incompatible breach of hospitality in Virginia, should have been followed by such a retribution one in which we perceive almost a po etical justice. It concerns my purpose merely to advert to the fact that, in 1632, King Charles gave his permission- to Lord Baltimore to prepare the Charter of Maryland. That instrument was, in pursuance of this permission, drawn up, it is said, by Calvert s own hand, or under his personal dicta tion. Before it passed the seals, he died 25th of April, 1632 leaving Cecil heir, not only to his title and fortune, but also to his enterprise and his hopes. The charter was executed on the 2oth of June following, with no other change than the substitution of Cecil for his father ; and was signed by the King, who, himself, gave the province the name of Maryland, in honor of his Queen Henrietta Maria, instead of " Crescen- tia," as Lord Baltimore had originally designed. This Charter is said to be a transcript, with no other al teration than the localities required, from that which had before been granted by James, for the province of Avalon.* * Chalmers, in his History of the Revolt of the American Golo- GEORGE CALVERT. 141 Fuller s brief description of the Newfoundland patent, which I have already quoted, would seem to confirm this fact. In addition to what I have brought into this summary of Cal vert s history, it is proper to notice that in 1620 he was first elected to Parliament to represent Yorkshire, through the influence of the celebrated Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford : he was subsequently elected by the Uni versity of Oxford. His parliamentary career, which lasted four or five years, seems to have been, as far as the scant records of it disclose its character, at least worthy of the praise of a diligent and upright performance of the duties which it required of him. We may suppose that these duties, as a minister of state in the House of Commons, were by no means light, and that they demanded the frequent exhibition of a high order of knowledge, tact and judgment. There can be no doubt that his services in this theatre were entirely acceptable to the king. In politics, he was of the Court Party of that reign, op posed to the Country Party designations which subsequently slid into those of Tory and Whig. As one of this party, he was the advocate of the high kingly Prerogative, as contradis tinguished from the Privilege of the Legislative body ; a champion of Executive power, against the power of parlia ment. Not only his interest, but we must presume, his in clinations lay in that way. Grahame says of him, what would seem almost sarcastically said, that " he was a strenuous as- serter of the supremacy of that authority from the exercise of which he expected to derive his own enrichment." I will not do him the wrong in the absence of better proof than we have, to believe that he was not entirely honest in maintaining the prerogative against the popular privilege. In parliament, we find him asserting the doctrine, " that the American terri tory, having been acquired by conquest, was subject exclu sively to the control of the royal prerogative : in other words, nies, says it was " literally copied from the prior patent of Avalon." Book the Second, ch. 3. 142 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. that the King, and not parliament, had the entire regulation and government of the colonies. This, with many other ultra-monarchical doctrines of that day, we can have no doubt James would expect his ministers to defend ; and, though highly flattering to a monarch of his character, they were not, however, without a strong party opposed to them, even in the parliament of which Sir George Calvert was a member. The facts I have now brought to view demonstrate that Lord Baltimore was of a family of rank and influence in Eng land ** that he was wealthy, as the expenditure of 25,000 on the settlement of Avalon, a very large sum in those days, would show : that having married early in life, he was brought into the way of preferment and favor through the friendship of the prime minister ; that his personal deportment, political opinions, habits of business and usefulness secured him the regard of King James, a pedantic and hypercritical asserter of the broadest pretensions of kingly government, a prince whose service exacted an earnest defence of the highest claims of prerogative : that, being for a long time a member of a company concerned in the colonization of Virginia, and, moreover, one of the Committee of Council for the planta tions, he had ample opportunities to become acquainted with the character of these enterprises, and to embark in them with advantages which very few possessed. There is indeed abundant evidence that these schemes of colonization were a favorite speculation of his. He was engaged in them from the date of his early manhood until the close of his life. It was his prevailing passion, if we may so speak, and was in dulged in with great assiduity, personal devotion, and at heavy pecuniary charge. There is no evidence that his ardor in these undertakings was stimulated by any motive having refer ence to particular religious opinions. We are, on the contrary, bound to presume that his purpose was in part the advance- * The family of Calvert is said to be descended from an ancient and noble house of that name in the Earldom of Flanders, whence they were transplanted into the northern parts of England. GEOKGE CALVEKT. 143 ment of his own reputation, the increase of the wealth of his family, and, as the Maryland charter expresses it, " a laudable and pious, zeal for extending the Christian religion, and also the territories of our (the British) empire." We may com mend him for all these motives as in their nature honorable, just and useful. He obtained from James the charter for the province of Avalon ; from Charles that for Maryland, the one about ten years before the other. As these charters are claimed to be the production of Lord Baltimore s own hand, an examination of that to which we have access, our own, may serve to give us further insight into the history of the author. Turning to this instrument, then, we may remark that it embodies a scheme of the strongest government known throughout all the American colonies. The Proprietary was made the absolute lord of the prov ince, saving only the allegiance due by him to the crown. He was invested with prerogatives and royal rights, not infe rior to those of the king himself. He was empowered to make laws, with the advice of the freemen, and to withhold his assent from such as he did not approve. The Proprietary even claimed and practised in the course of the government of the province, the right to dispense with the laws, in accord ance with a principle asserted by king James, as a branch of the royal prerogative, and which we may conclude was conso nant with Lord Baltimore s own opinions. He was authorized to create manors with manorial rights and lordships ; to re ward well-born and deserving subjects with titles and dignities ; to summon, by writ, as we find by early practice under the Charter, whatsoever freemen he chose, to take a seat in the Legislative Assembly, without election by the people,* thus * The language of the Charter, regarding the summoning of dele gates, is : " Whom we will shall be called together for the framing of Laws, when and as often as need shall require, by the aforesaid Baroft of Baltimore and his heirs, and in the form which shall seem the best to him or them." 144 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. enabling him to control the majority of that body. He was empowered to make ordinances, in certain emergencies, of equal force with laws, and without the aid or confirmation of the Assembly. He had the absolute control of the military and naval force of the colony, and might declare and exercise martial law, at his own pleasure, whenever he should conceive rebellion or sudden tumult to demand it. He possessed the patronage and advowsons of all churches, and had the sole authority to license the building or founding of churches and chapels, and to cause them to be consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England. In regard to these last two subjects, I beg to observe that they apply strictly and exclusively to the Church of England, the Protestant Episcopal Church. The advowson, or right of presentation of a minister to a parish or ecclesiastical bene fice, being only a right, in the sense of this Charter, connected with the organization of that church ; while the right to license the consecration of churches and chapels is, in terms, confined to such as were to be consecrated " according to the ecclesias tical laws of England." These were the powers, rights and prerogatives conferred upon the Proprietary. On the other hand, the concessions or grants to the colonists are equally worthy of notice. The col onists were guaranteed all the privileges, liberties and fran chises of Englishmen born within the Realm. They were protected against all laws repugnant to the laws, statutes and customs of England ; and what is particularly deserving of observation, they were forever exempted, by express covenant in the Charter, from all royal taxation by the crown from all " impositions, customs or other taxations, quotas or contribu tions whatever," to be levied by the King or his successors. There is also a clause which provides that no interpretation shall be made of the Charter, " whereby God s holy and true Christian religion, or the allegiance due to us (the King), our heirs and successors, may, in any wise, suffer by change, prejudice or diminution" GEORGE CALVERT. 145 No provision was made for submitting the laws, ordinances or proceedings of the province, either to the King or Parlia ment, by which omission the security against infractions of the Charter was very materially diminished, perhaps in a great many cases rendered altogether unavailing. It has been inti mated that this omission was not accidental, but, rather, inten tionally made to strengthen the hand of the Proprietary against a supervision which he chose to have as little exercised as possible. This defect in the Charter was complained of and represented by the Commissioners of Plantations, in 1633, to the House of Commons. It seems, however, to have been passed by without a remedy. * Nothing," says Chalmers, " can afford more decisive proof than these material omis sions, that Sir George Calvert was the chief penman of the grant. For the rights of the Proprietary were carefully at tended to, but the prerogatives of the crown, the rights of the nation, were in a great measure overlooked or forgotten." This is a sketch of the Charter. Certainly we may affirm of it, that, however beneficent it might be under the ministration of a liberal and wise Proprie tary, it contains many features which but little coincide with our notions of free or safe government. Considering it as the work of Lord Baltimore himself, it is a very striking exponent of his political opinions. The colonial history of that period, 1632, furnished abundant examples in the New England set tlements, of government on a much more popular basis, and we cannot suppose that these were not well understood by Calvert. We must infer, therefore, that he was no great ad mirer of those forms which diffused power among the people, and restricted the exercise of it in the magistrate that he was, in fact, here, as well as in England, the friend of Prerog ative against Privilege. The review of this Charter impresses me strongly with the conviction that its author was an adroit manager of public af fairs, skilful in business, sufficiently awake to his own interest, and intent on obtaining as much from the crown as his posi- 146 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. tion enabled him to procure ; that he was remarkably calm and unobtrusive even compromising and politic in his re ligious opinions ; and that he enjoyed, to a very extraordinary degree, the favor, esteem and confidence of his sovereign. That proviso which prohibits any interpretation of the Charter which might " change, prejudice, or diminish" the true Christian religion, or the allegiance due to the crown, was un doubtedly intended to guard the rights of those persons at tached to the English Church who might emigrate to the prov ince,* and also to preserve unimpaired the allegiance of all British subjects, as that allegiance was then understood. It was a very natural condition for a Protestant monarch, of that period, to require in a grant to any subject, when the grant gave such powers as those contained in the Maryland Char ter j much more when that subject was of a different religious faith from the monarch himself. The mind of Great Britain was, at that date, intensely agitated with the fears, jealousies and hatreds of a fierce religious quarrel. The question of the supremacy which was involved in that of allegiance, constitu ted a large ingredient in this quarrel. The oath of allegiance, passed in the reign of Elizabeth, and then in force, declared the King governor of all his do minions and countries, "as well in all spiritual and ecclesias tical things or causes, as temporal/ It was held by the highest authorities of the Romish Church, that this oath /xmld not be taken by those who pro fessed that faith, without incurring the censure of the church : though it is known that many Catholics in England did not so interpret it. Upon the detection of the Gunpowder Plot, a new oath was exacted by Parliament, which was particularly aimed at the Catholic party. All persons who were suspected to belong to that party were required to take it upon the de mand of the Bishop of the Diocese, or of the Justices of the Peace. It contained a denial of the power of the Pope to de pose the King, or to dispose of his dominions, or to absolve * See Hazard s State Papers, vol. i. pp. 621, 624. GEOKGE CALVERT. his subjects from their allegiance ; and it abjured, as impious, the doctrine that excommunication of a prince authorized his being put to death or deposed by his subjects. This oath, like the former, furnished matter of discontent to the Roman Pontiff. Paul the Fifth addressed a brief to the English Catholics, commanding them to abstain from taking it, holding that it could not be taken " without hurting of the Catholic faith." Upon this arose that celebrated dispute, which makes no small figure in the history of the time, between King James on one side, and Paul the Fifth, with Cardinal Bellarmine, on the other. Whatever may have been the intrinsic merits of this dispute, it is very certain that it greatly irritated the pub lic mind, and produced a large store of ill-will between the friends and followers of the two parties. King James himself had written and spoken, argued and scolded in this quarrel, in the sharpest temper of that vain pedantry for which he was renowned. There is something amusing, as well as character istic, in the quaint and solemn anger of the following out break, which I find in a speech delivered by him in the Star Chamber in 1616 : " I confess," he says, " I am loth to hang a priest only for religion s sake and saying mass ; but if he refuse the oath of allegiance, which (let the Pope and all the devils in hell say what they will), yet, as you find by my book and divers others, is merely civil, those that so refuse the oath, and are poly- pragmatic recusants, I leave them to the law ; it is no perse cution, but good justice." It is not to be supposed that a despotic monarch, in such a polypragmatic temper as this, would be likely to make a grant of power to govern a state, without a vigilant eye to this question of allegiance, and some such reservation as this of our Charter, first inserted in that of Avalon, and exacted, no doubt, by Charles in the copy of that which was granted for Maryland. I stop here to remark that Sir George Calvert, at the date 148 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of the Avalon Charter, is generally reputed to have been of the Protestant faith. In 1624, when he resigned the post of Secretary of State, " he freely confessed to the King," says Fuller, " that he was then become a Roman Catholic." Upon this question of the supposed conversion of Calvert, there seems to be room for great doubt. I do not believe in it at all. I think there is proof extant to show that he had al ways been attached to the Church of Rome, or, at least, from an early period of his life. The chief authority for his conversion is Fuller, in the passage to which I have referred. That account assigns it to the year 1624, when it occasioned, according to the author, his resignation. Now Calvert settled his colony in Newfound land in 1621 ; and Oldmixon and others, among whom I find our own historian Bozman,* have ascribed this settlement to his wish to provide an asylum for persecuted Catholics. Al though I cannot discover any warrant for this statement, ei ther in the history of the times or in what is known of Calvert, yet the assertion of it by Oldmixon and those who have pre ceded or followed him, demonstrates that they did not credit the story of the conversion as given by Fuller ; for the author of the Worthies of England dates the conversion three years later than the settlement of Avalon, and affirms it to be the motive to Calvert s resignation of a high trust, which, he in forms us, the Secretary supposed he could not conscientiously hold as a Catholic. If the conversion had taken place so early in the life of George Calvert as to have opened to him the scheme of plan ning a settlement for his persecuted fellow Catholics in New foundland, it must have happened before 1621. Indeed, as such a scheme was not of a character to be matured without long consideration, and preparing for the enterprise, it is not too much to presume that he had been of the faith which he was so anxious to protect, even in 1619, when he accepted the office of Secretary of State. We might then ask, why did he * History of Maryland, vol. i. p. 232. GEOKGE CALVEKT. accept that office, with the scruples imputed to him by Fuller ? At all events, why did he not resign it in 1621, if he had such scruples ? Even in 1624, the King, if Fuller s story be true, did not recognize the necessity of Calvert s resignation, for he was so affected " by this his ingenuity," says Fuller, " that he con tinued him privy councillor all his reign, and soon after created him Lord Baltimore, of Baltimore in Ireland." Why should he resign ? The only motive that could impel him to it, as a question of conscience, was the necessity of taking the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. These he had already taken when he accepted office : and this being done, his continuance in office threw no new obligations upon him. Calvert was not averse from taking these oaths, we may fairly infer first, because he had, in fact, taken them on assuming office ; and second, because his Avalon Charter, already granted, and his Maryland Charter, which was conferred but a few years afterwards, both placed him under obligations, on this point of supremacy and allegiance, which, as an honor able man, he could not have incurred if he entertained the scruples imputed to him. It is only to read the Charter, and to observe the import of the clause relating to the consecra tion of churches, the security of the religion of the. Church of England, and the allegiance due to the crown, which I have already noticed, to see the force of this conclusion. I cannot, therefore, perceive with Fuller that there was any special reason connected with Calvert s official relation to James, which rendered it a point of conscience that he should give up his office. Nor can I believe, if he had surren dered his post for that reason, he could have retained the favor of the king ; much less that he could have attracted such renewed manifestations of it as he experienced. I dis credit the story altogether. There were several Catholic noblemen who enjoyed the confidence and friendship of James, and received high dignities from him : there were, for example, the two Howards, Lords Thomas and Henry, one the son 150 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. and the other the brother of the Duke of Norfolk, who were both brought into the ministry, the first being created Earl of Norfolk, and made Lord Treasurer, the second Earl of North ampton. There was no great asperity in the feelings of James against such Catholics as had been bred and nurtured in that faith. Towards such he was in the habit of expressing the most tolerant opinions. But he was noted for the avowal of particular hostility against such as had been converts from the Protestant Church. In a speech delivered at Whitehall, in 1609, on the occasion of the opening of Parliament, he said, " I divide all my subjects that are papists into two ranks ; either old papists that were so brought up in times of popery, and those that be younger in years, yet have never drunk in other milk, or else such as do become apostates, having once been of our profession, and have forsaken the truth, either upon discontent or practice, or else upon a light, vain humor of novelty. For the former sort I pity them, but if they be good and quiet subjects, I hate not their per sons ; and if I were a private man, I could well keep a civil friendship and conversation with some of them. But as for these apostates, who I know must be the greatest haters of their own sect, I confess I can never show any favorable countenance toward them ; and they may all be sure, without exception, that they shall never find any more favor of me than I must needs, in justice, afford them, and these would I have the law to strike severeliest upon, and you carefullest to discover." Eight years after this, we find him expressing the same feeling, in language equally strong. He says, in 1616, in his Star Chamber speech, "I can love the person of a papist, being otherwise a good man and honestly bred, never having known any other religion ; but the person of an apos tate papist I hate." It is not to be believed that James, thus openly avowing and reiterating such sentiments, would consent openly to re ward, with distinguished marks of favor, a subject who stood precisely in the category he so strongly denounced. It is GEORGE CALVEKT. 151 against all rational deduction of human conduct to believe, in the face of James s known a\ersion against converts to the Catholic from the Protestant faith, and his continued mani festation of kindness to Calvert, that the story told by Fuller, of Calvert s conversion, can be true. I refer to these facts, and especially to these extracts from the writings and speeches of King James, in no sectarian spirit I am incapable of being enlisted as a partisan in such a cause. My respect for all who honestly profess the faith of either of the churches to which this controversy refers, and, above all, my reverence for the rights of conscience, for bid me to allude to these incidents with any other purpose than to use the facts which they supply to the illustration of a very interesting point in the history of this State. They furnish an almost conclusive argument to prove that Sir George Cal vert was, if not actually nursed in the faith of Rome, no con vert to that faith in his period of manhood : that if he ever was a Protestant, there is no record of it within our knowledge. There were many in those days who did not choose to incur the vexations and perpetual annoyances of the proscrip tion which the law denounced against Catholics ; and to avoid these, they chose to conceal their opinions. The better part of the community I mean the more considerate and liberal connived at these concealments, and gave the parties all the aid in their power. We find constant references to this fact in the history of the time. James himself secretly sustained many of these, especially when the persons con cerned were friendly and serviceable to himself. In addition to the names I have already given, I find proof of this in a fact recorded by Burnet. I quote from his History of his Own Times : " He (the King) fearing an opposition to his succeeding to the crown of England from the papist party, which, though it had little strength in the House of Commons, yet was very great in the House of Lords, and was very con siderable in all the northern parts, and among the body of the people, employed, several persons who were known to be 152 OCCASIONAL ADDEES8E8. papists, though they complied outwardly. The chief of these were Elphinson, Secretary of State, whom he made Lord Bal- merinoch, and Seaton, afterwards Chancellor and Earl of Dunfermline." I much rather incline to the belief, without, in any degree, derogating from Lord Baltimore s integrity, that he was one of those who did not choose to make any very public exhibition of his faith ; preferring the peace and security of private wor ship to the hazard and contention which a too open manifesta tion of it might bring. That being a man of moderate opinions, tolerant, and unassuming, a sensible and discreet man, enjoying the confidence, and diligently employed in the service of the King, he thought it the part of prudence and wisdom to keep his religion as much as possible confined to the privacy of his own chamber. We may believe that James was not too curious to inquire into the private opinions of a useful and faithful servant ; and that when, in the last year of that monarch s life, Calvert made some open avowal to him of his attachment to the proscribed faith, which most probably the King had known or surmised long before, the disclosure produced no more unfriendly answer than an assurance of unabated confidence, and the promise of further preferment. This, to my mind, is the most rational explanation of the varying facts that are brought to us, and may have been at the foundation of the story told by Fuller. It is much the most probable surmise that the Secretaryship was resigned, not on a scruple of conscience, but from a desire on the part of Calvert to visit his colony in Newfoundland, which he did very soon after that event.* There are other circumstances to raise a doubt of the story of the conversion. All the children of Lord Baltimore, of whom we know any thing, were Roman Catholics. We can hardly suppose their conversion to have followed that of their father. In 1624, Cecil, the eldest, was in his eighteenth * Vide note, page 38, showing that Lord Baltimore visited New foundland very soon after his resignation. GEORGE CALVERT. 153 year. Leonard, who took charge of the first colony in 1633, must have been but one or two years younger. Philip, who, in 1656, was made Secretary of the Province, and subse quently Chancellor, and then Governor, was probably very young at the period of his father s death.* These three sons we know were Catholics. When did they become so ? It is assuming too much to suppose that the mere influence of the * In the Memoirs of the Baltimore Family, published in the Lon don Magazine, June, 1768, it is said that George Lord Baltimore had eleven children : Cecil, Leonard, George, Francis, Henry, John, Anne, Dorothy, Elizabeth, Grace, and Helen. John and Francis died before their father. Anne married William Peaseley, Esq. ; Grace married Sir George Talbot, of Cartoun, in the County of Kildare, Bart. No mention is made in this list of Philip, who resided for many years in the Province of Maryland, and filled some of the highest offices in it. In the Appendix to the second volume of Bozman s Maryland, p. 699, may be seen the commission of Cecil, to " our very loving brother Philip Calvert, Esq.," creating him one of the Coun cil. A tablet erected to the memory of Lady Baltimore, in Herting- fordbury Church, has the following inscription, as well as I am able to decipher it in the wretched Latin which I copy from an ob scure MS., of the origin of which I am ignorant : Obiit 8 die August, Anno Salutis, 1622. D. 0. M. E. ET JUCUNDISS. MEMORISE ANN^ GEOR. F. JOAN. N. MINN^l Ad omnia qusecunque egregia natae, ad meliora regressse, Pietate, pudicitia, prudentia incomparabilis f eminse, Georgius Leon. F. Joan. N. Calvertus Eques Aur. Invictiss. Jacobo Regi Mag. Britanic, Franc, Hibernise, pio felici, semper, augusto, secret, prim. Et a conciliis sanctoribus, quae cum vixit annos 18, sine offensa, libe- rosque pari sex vis discrimiiie decem Reliquit Cecilium, Leonardum, Georgium, Franciscum, Henri cum, Annam, Dorotheam, Elizabetham, Graciarn, Helenam, Sextem autem filiu.ni Johannem, mortis, Heu, suse luctusque paterni prodromum ediderat, Tarn suavis contubernii memor maritus, tantoque Dolore et desiderio impar, conjugi sanctissimae hoc Monumentum manibus geminis gemens posuit, Sibique et suis posteris eorum. Vixit An. XLII. M. ix. D.XVIII. : OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. parent s example would be sufficient with the two elder, Cecil and Leonard, at their time of life, to induce them to abandon the church in which they were bred, for another, against which all the prejudices of their youth and all the influences of their education must have been arrayed. It is much more probable that these sons were privately nurtured in the faith to which their parents had been attached before the children were born. Among the proofs to be brought against the conversion, there is a strong passage in Rapin, which seems almost to settle the question. Referring to the intrigues of the Spanish minister, Gondo- mar, in 1620, to manage king James, through his eagerness for the Spanish match the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Infanta and, by the pretext of promoting that mar riage, to prevent the king from taking up the cause of his son- in-law, the Elector Palatine, Rapin remarks : " He (the king) was so possessed with the project of ending the war by means of this match, that nothing was capable of altering this belief." Count Gondomar had bribed with presents and pensions all those who had the king s ear, and who took care to cherish him in this vain project. Particularly the author adds, in a note upon the authority of Arthur Wilson, " the Earls of Worcester and Arundel, the Lord Digby, Sir George Calvert, Sir Richard Weston and others popishly affected"* *This story of the bribery was very current at that time, as one may see in the first volume of Rushworth, who gives a copy of the instructions of the King of Spain to his minister in reference to it, exhibiting a very curious feature of diplomacy. It may amuse us to learn how broadly Gondomar practised on these instructions, as we may see from another of Rapin s notes, which immediate 1 y follows that I have just quoted. It is in these words : " Wilson says he bribed the very ladies, especially those who talked much, and to whom much company resorted, that they might alloy sucli as were too sour in their expressions, and stop them if they run on too fast. But it seems he had neglected the Lady Jacobs, who, upon his pass ing by her window in his chair, instead of answering his salutation GEOKGE CALVERT. 155 I produce this passage not to give credit or currency to the bribery which, in deference to Calvert s high character, integrity and honor, I utterly disbelieve, but to show that, in 1620, he was regarded as a gentleman well affected to the Church of Rome, and was associated, in the public estima tion, with that party who were favorable to the Spanish match, a project which was particularly repugnant to the great body of the Protestants of that day, and no less particularly sought and desired by the Catholics.* as usual, only gaped with her mouth, which, repeating again next day, he sent to know the reason. She replied, she had a mouth to be stopped as well as other ladies. " * It is worthy of notice, as an item of testimony in this argument, that Anthony Wood, in liis account of Calvert, says nothing about his conversion, but remarks, at the time of his being made Lord Bal timore he was supposed to be well affected to Popery. Wood makes no reference to Fuller, who, as far as I can learn, is the sole authority for the story of the conversion. My view of Calvert s private adhesion to the Church of Rome at a date so much earlier than is ascribed to him by Fuller, is greatly strengthened b} r the following extract from a letter written by Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury to Sir T. Roe, just before Lord Balti more s visit to Newfoundland, and which is quoted from Roe s Letters, p. 372, by Horace Walpole, is his list of Noble Authors, under the title of " George Calvert, Lord Baltimore." It is as follows : " Mr. Secretary Calvert" saith the prelate " hath never looked merrily since the prince s coming out of Spain : it was thought he was much interested in the Spanish affairs : a course was taken to rid him of all employments and negotiations. This made him discon tented; and, as the saying is, Desperatio facit monachum, so he ap parently did turn papist, which he now professeth, this being the third time that he hath been to blame that way. His majesty, to dis miss him, suffered him to resign his secretary s place to Sir Albertus Morton, who paid him 3000 for the same : and the King hath made him Baron of Baltimore in Ireland : so he is withdrawn from us ; and having bought a ship of 400 tons, he is going to New England or Newfoundland, where he hath a colony." This is testimony from an enemy, who might be inclined to put the worst construction on Calvert s acts, and to say as much to his prejudice as he could. While, therefore, we may disregard the mo- 156 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. I have now set forth the principal facts which have been accessible to my search, to disprove the current opinion con cerning Lord Baltimore s religion. This point is of great importance as an index to the char acter of Calvert, and of his conduct in the settlement of Maryland. If it be true, as I have endeavored to show, that Calvert, during the period of his official service in the govern ment and at the date of his settlements in Newfoundland and in Maryland, was a Roman Catholic this fact presents him to us in a new light, from which we may gather some very striking views of our early colonial history, and much also to increase our good opinion of the founder of the State. Regarding him in this character of a Catholic gentleman, and scanning his history in that relation, we shall find strong motive to admire him for some excellent and rare qualities of character. The times through which he lived were peculiarly trying to men of rank and consideration attached to the Church of Rome. The religious wars of the Reformation had kept Europe, during almost a century, in a state of ferocious exas peration. The Protestants had gained the ascendancy in England during the reign of Elizabeth, but were not so confi- tives he imputes to Calvert, we may still find useful illustration in the facts to which he refers. This account certainly proves that Cal vert was believed by his contemporaries to be secretly attached to the Church of Rome, and we may infer from it a very cogent support of the view I have endeavored to present of his character. I am led also to believe that the family of Lady Calvert she was the daughter of George Minne, Esq. were Catholics ; as I find in Rush- worth, vol. i. p, 395, in the year 1626, that Sir Henry Minne is pre sented by the House of Co mmons to the King, as a suspected popish recusant. This, though a fact of doubtful import, would seem to contribute some aid to the argument I have offered. Calvert s mar riage into a Catholic family might either indicate his original attach ment to the faith of Rome, or explain his early adhesion to it, and the fact also, of his children being educated in its tenets. The evidence thus accumulated upon this point leaves us no room to doubt the inaccuracy of Fuller s statement. GEORGE CALVERT. 157 dent in the security of their position as to relax either the rigor or the vigilance of their jealousy of the adverse party. Unfortunately, the heady zeal of fanatics, on the other side, aided by the ancient hatreds which centuries had nursed, had perpetrated many excesses that gave too much cause to this jealousy. I will not allude to them more particularly, because I take no pleasure in reviving passages of history which had much better, on occasions like this, be forgotten. It is suffi cient to say that the Parliament of England, stimulated both by real and imaginary fears of the Roman Catholic party, and, doubtless, something moved by the characteristic temper of the theological warfare that still raged, passed several severe disabling statutes, which suspended over the Catholic subjects of the realm the vexations, if not the terrors, of a very keen proscription. The Puritans, somewhat famed at that day for their intolerance of all sects, but especially of the Roman Catholics, were gaining the ascendancy in Parliament, and were infusing into that body a large admixture of their own dislikes. In such a time, the prudence of Calvert conducted him not only safely through the perils of his career, but enabled him, in addition, to secure the protection and favor of the King. In such a time, Calvert became a member of the Vir ginia Company, and lent his aid, of course, to the scheme of colonization, which it fostered. In such a time, he obtained the charters of Avalon and Maryland, and devoted h^nself with a generous zeal to the project of settlement which these charters contemplated. What shall we say of that clause in these charters which secured to all emigrants, who chose to demand it, the free ex ercise of the religion of the Church of England ? What of that grant which gave to the Proprietary the patronage and ad vow- sons of the English Church, as well as the right to found all the churches and chapels of that faith ? What shall we say of such grants as these to a Catholic nobleman by a Protestant Prince ? Certainly we may say that the Prince who made 158 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. such a grant had great faith in the religious tolerance, the wis dom and integrity of the subject to whom the grant was made. Certainly we may say that the man who attracted such confi dence, was neither a fanatic nor a bigot, but one whose char acter gave the highest assurance that his trust would not be abused. I find no reason, whatever, to suppose, as I have already intimated, that in the planting of either Avalon or Maryland, Lord Baltimore was moved by a special desire to provide an asylum for persecuted Catholics, as many have alleged. The Charter of Maryland does not indicate such a purpose, nor do the proceedings under it. Quite the reverse. I gather from that Charter, and from all I read concerning what was done under it, that it was planned by Lord Baltimore, and carried into execution by him and his sons, in a spirit of the broadest and most liberal toleration towards, at least, all Christian sects. The wisdom of that age had not risen to the acknowledgment of that universal freedom of conscience the glory of the pres ent time which limits not to Christendom only the privilege that belongs to mankind. The glory of Maryland toleration, which has been so fruitful a theme of panegyric to American historians, is truly in the Charter, not in the celebrated act of 1649. There is more free dom of conscience, more real toleration, an hundred-fold, in this Charter of a Protestant prince to a Catholic nobleman, than in that act so often recalled to our remembrance, in reference to which I propose to take some other opportunity to review its history and its supposed claims to our admiration. The giory of Maryland toleration is in the Charter not in the act of 1649. I n settling the colony under this charter, it is true that ecil, the second Lord Baltimore, gathered the colonists chiefly from the Roman Catholics. It was quite natural that, in mak ing up his first adventure, the Proprietary should have gone among his friends and kinsmen, and solicited their aid to his enterprise. It is to their credit that they joined him in it. And much more to their credit that they faithfully administered the Charter, by opening the door of emigration to all Chris- GEOKGE CALVERT. 159 tians, with an assurance of equal rights and privilege. Where have we such a spectacle in that age ? All the world was in tolerant of religious opinion but this little band of adventurers, who, under the guidance of young Leonard Calvert, commit ted their fortunes and their hopes to the Ark and the Dove, and entered Maryland between St. Michael and St. Joseph, as they denominated the two headlands of the Potomac, the portals to that little wilderness which was to become the home of their posterity. All the world outside of these portals was intolerant, proscriptive, vengeful against the children of a dis senting faith. Here, only, in Maryland, throughout all this wide world of Christendom, was there an altar erected, and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship. Let those who first reared it enjoy the renown to which it has entitled them! This happy enterprise could not have succeeded under any other circumstances than those which existed. If Charles had been a Catholic Prince, a Catholic Proprietary would have pro cured a Charter for the establishment of a Catholic province. If Calvert had been a Protestant nobleman, a Protestant Prince would have granted him a Charter for a Protestant province. In either case it would have been proscriptive. Both of these predicaments were abundantly exemplified in the history of that period. Exclusiveness, intolerance, persecution of oppos ing sects, were the invariable characteristic of early Ameri can colonization. It was to the rare and happy coincidence of a wise, moderate and energetic Catholic statesman, asking and receiving a Charter from a Protestant monarch, jealous of the faith, but full of honorable confidence in the integrity of his servant, that we owe this luminous and beautiful excep tion of Maryland to the spirit of the colonization of the seven teenth century. Before this enterprise was consummated, Lord Baltimore died. His son Cecil was now twenty-eight years of age. To him was committed the fulfilment of his father s design. He was faithful to the trust ; and in the same beneficent, liberal and sagacious spirit in which the colony was first projected , 160 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. he devoted himself to the ministration of its affairs. He was wealthy, and in the first two years expended forty thousaud pounds upon the plantation. It is not my purpose now to comment upon the history or the character of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore. I reserve that for another time. I wish, however, before I close this dis course, to note some facts connected with Cecil s administra tion of the province, to show how admirably and how justly the father had conceived the plan of a benignant government, and how faithfully the son had carried it into execution. The in cident to which I am about to call your attention, is an index to the purpose of Lord Baltimore, more comprehensive and pertinent than a volume of dissertation. Maryland may be called THE LAND OF THE SANCTUARY. All Christians were in vited freely within its borders. They found there a written covenant of security against all encroachment on their rights of conscience by the Lord Proprietary or his government. The following story, copied by Bozman from the records at An napolis, will illustrate not only how tenderly these rights of conscience were respected, but what would be quite remarka ble in any government what delicate concern was manifested in the early administration of the province, for the sensibilities of those who might feel aggrieved by any attempt to insult their religious opinions. A proclamation had been issued by Leonard Calvert, the Governor, in 1638, to prohibit " all unseasonable disputations in point of religion, tending to the disturbance of the public peace and quiet of the colony, and to the opening of faction in religion" Captain Cornwaleys, a Catholic gentleman, one of the most distinguished and authoritative persons in the prov ince, had two Protestant servants by the name of Gray and Sedgrave. These two chanced to be reading aloud together Smith s Sermons, a Protestant book, and were overheard by William Lewis, an overseer in the employment of Cornwaleys. Lewis was a zealous Catholic, and it happened that the serv ants, when overheard by him, were reading a passage to which he took great exception : it charged the Pope to be antichrist, GEOBGE CALVERT. 161 and the Jesuits to be antichristian ministers. Lewis, it seems, supposed this was read aloud to vex him : whereupon, getting into a passion, he told them " that it was a falsehood, and came from the devil as all lies did : and that he that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and he would prove it : and that all Protestant minister^ were the ministers of the devil," and he forbade them reading more. Without going further into the particulars, it will be suffi cient to relate that the two servants prepared a formal com plaint against the overseer, to be submitted to the Governor and Council ; that Captain Cornwaleys, himself gave the case another direction, by sending it into court, of which Governor Calvert, Cornwaleys, and Mr. Lewger, the Secretary of the Province, were the members ; that this court summoned all the parties before it, heard the whole case, and fined Lewis five hun dred pounds of tobacco, and ordered him to remain in prison until he should find sureties for his good behavior in future. This proceeding needs no comment. It certainly was a curious matter to be made a State affair : but it very striking ly displays the patriarchal character of the government and its extreme solicitude to keep all religious bickerings and discon tents out of the province. It is curious, not only as an evi dence of the tolerant spirit of a Catholic administration, en gaged in defending Protestant subjects from insult, but also as an evidence of the care of that government to protect the hum blest persons within its jurisdiction from the slightest invasion of their rights of conscience. We might ask if a parallel to this incident can be produced in the history of colonization on this continent. I am admonished by the time I have occupied, of the ne cessity of drawing this discourse to a close. I shall do this, in presenting the character of Calvert, as it strikes me in the review I have made of his life. Belknap, writing from the biographies of Collier and Kippis, says of him:* "Though he was a Roman Catholic, he kept himself disengaged from all interest, behaving with such mod- * American Biography, vol. ii. p. 367. Title, Calvert. 162 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. eration and propriety, that all parties were pleased with him. He was a man of great good sense, not obstinate in his opin ions, taking as much pleasure in hearing the sentiments of oth ers, as in delivering his own. While he was Secretary of State, lie examined all letters, and carried to the King every night, an exact and well digested account of affairs. He agreed with Sir John Popham, in the design of foreign plantations, but dif fered in the manner of executing it. Popham was for extirpa ting the original inhabitants ; Calvert was for civilizing and converting them. The former was for present profit ; the lat ter for reasonable expectation, and for employing governors who were not interested merchants, but unconcerned gentlemen : he was for granting liberties with caution, leaving every one to provide for himself by his own industry, and not to depend on a common interest. This sketch of Calvert is, doubtless, just. We may say, in addition, that he was characterized not less by the politic man agement then by the vigor with which he prosecuted his de signs. Considering the difficulties in his way, nothing but the greatest tact and judgment could have conducted his plan of the Maryland settlement to a prosperous conclusion. His ad dress in the contest with Virginia, evidenced by his complete success, gives us a high opinion of his fitness for public affairs. The enterprise shown by him in the defence of Avalon ; his perseverance and promptness in bringing his Maryland scheme into action ; his personal labors in both of these colonies, im press us most favorably with a respect for his courage, his en ergy, and his skill in the management of men. The posts which he filled, his position and conduct in parliament, the favor and esteem he seems always to have inspired, demon strate his ability, as well as his prudence, and give us reason to infer an amiable, well bred and affable disposition : the char acter of the government he established in Maryland, and the just sentiments with which he seems to have inspired his son, and the lavish expenditure which he, doubtless, both author ized and provided before his death, attest his liberal views of GEORGE CALVERT. 163 the rights of conscience, his generosity, and his zeal in the cause of colonization. He was eminently fitted for his undertaking, by the cir cumstances in which he lived. Although we have no reason to believe that he was a very ardent or zealous follower of his faith, but, on the contrary, moderate in that as in all other matters of opinion or conduct, yet to a certain extent, he had been schooled in adversity : not the adversity of want, or of disfavor, but in that adversity which a lofty spirit equally feels, the proscription, namely, of himself, his kindred and friends, for maintaining a faith to which his judgment and con science attached him. Persecution and intolerance of his own particular religious opinions taught him, what they always teach upright minds, the practice of the opposite virtues ; and they brought him to a true appreciation of that nobleness of charac ter which cherishes freedom of opinion as one of the highest prerogatives of a rational being. In this respect Calvert was in advance of his age. There was ever before him a daily ad monition of the necessity of reserve, prudence and humility, from which he drew a wise man s profit. The bitter intoler ance which was, in his time, more or less the characteristic of every religious sect, almost the universal fashion of opinion, spent itself with peculiar acrimony in England against those of his creed. It furnished him a daily topic of meditation, and so chastened his feelings towards mankind. " It is the method of charity," says Sir Thomas Brown, " to suffer without reaction." This affords us the key to those virtues which appear so conspicuous in the frame and administration of the Maryland Colony, and which have drawn forth so much com mendation from historians. " Sweet are the uses of adversity." Happy is he who, ex perienced in these uses, comes to authority among his fellow- i aen whose temper, tuned to the humility of suffering, brings a heart warm with that memory, brings a mind skilled by old sympathies springing from the knowledge of human wrongs, to some station of control wherein he may somewhat direct and shape the lot of his fellow-men. Blessed is such a man in his 164 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. generation, if, wisely and humbly, with due weighing of his own trials, with due reverence for that holy light these trials have thrown upon the pathway of justice and mercy along which he is commissioned to walk, he remembers, heeds and practises the duty of guidance and instruction to his subordinates. When I go forth to seek a leader of men in whatsoever en terprise, let me find him of a generous nature, of a manly, brave spirit, of clear insight of what he is and what he has to do, of sturdy intelligence improved by all good studies, of honest soul, and then to all these rare perfections, let me add that richest grace which comes from a successful encounter with ad versity not broken by it, but taught ; not hardened in heart, but mellowed and filled with pity, such a man would be one, above all men, to follow, cherish, forever remember. Of such are heroes made : by them is our race adorned, exalted, made worthy of history. Truly, I believe no hero ever became ver itable but through this high road of suffering ! Mock heroes we have enough : the world is full of them, who strut before the footlights in all manner of tinsel ; who flaunt on many sign posts ; who fill the throats of a whole senseless generation with huzzas: such mock heroes, with their "mad jumble of hypoc risies," we have in all times to a surfeit. But no true hero, who has not stood, in many a dark day, erect and manful, trusting to his manhood, and confident to carve his way either to proud destruction, or to the prosperous light. This world s vicissi tudes, which men somewhat impiously call Fortune, are the tests by which God has signified the true man from the false ; which, checkering the progress of mortals with more or less of pain and privation, in greater or smaller degree, render them heroic ; prepare Hercules for his twelve labors ; prepare Jason for his long circumnavigation ; prepare Columbus for his abyss of waters, and his miraculous Epic of a New World ; prepare Washington to render that New World forever unchain- able, forever proud, and disdainful of tyranny. Is not George Calvert, in some honorable degree, entitled to a portion of this praise ? GEORGE CALVERT. . 165 APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSE ON LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE CALVERT. I HAVE a dislike to all literary controversy; and some thing more than dislike when my antagonist is a profes sional critic. I know that towards such a personage an author does wisely to show no contumacy for, whatever may be the merits of the dispute, the critic is sure to have the last word, which is equally sure to be more bitter than the first. In his vocation, the sense of having done injustice is generally a mo tive to repeat the injury. It is not, therefore, to convert the reviewer of my " Discourse on the Life and Character of George Calvert" to a more favorable opinion of that produc tion that I desire the use of your journal ; but to correct some of his misrepresentations, to set myself right before your read ers in regard to matters where he has set me particularly wrong, and to open to their view some points of history con cerning which he seems to have studiously endeavored to keep them in the dark. When I delivered the Discourse I was not aware that I was touching upon a subject which might not be handled as freely as any other question of history. Still less was I aware that I was about to bring the Maryland Historical Society under censure for their toleration of my production ; and, least of all, that I was laying that society under an obligation to make an amende to any one for the wrong they were about to do in publishing it. In these particulars I find I have been mistaken. The 166 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. elaborate review, with which I have been honored in the April number of your Magazine, is written in atone of rebuke which I can only understand as an admonition against the rashness of having an opinion of my own upon the subject I had chosen ; while both the review itself and your editorial notice of it con vey a very intelligible hint of the misdoings of the Historical Society in publishing the Discourse, their responsibility for its sentiments," and their duty to make "some amends" to somebody for the offence of this " extraordinary performance." I have no desire to vindicate the society for their part in this transgression. They will think of it, perhaps, when they come to print another address. Neither am I inclined to de fend myself against the asperity of the reviewer upon the lit erary merit of my performance. Measured by the standard of his severe taste, I am willing to confess my inferiority. I have nothing to object to his want of amiability : it is a critic s privilege to show his spleen, and almost his nature to be per sonally offensive. I can make all allowance for his indul gence of a reasonable amount of ill-nature, and set it down to the constitution or professional irritability of his class. But I have, in common with every other citizen of Maryland, and es pecially of every other native of the State, some concern with the manner in which he has thought proper to dispose of what relates to our early history and the right of investigating it. The Historical Society was instituted chiefly for the pur pose of collecting the materials which may serve to illustrate the history of Maryland. In the performance of this office, it is no part of its plan to suppress or distort any facts which it may be able to disclose. Its object is truth, not panegyric ; and its labors are addressed to their appropriate subject, not without a presentiment that our annals must exhibit the usual variety of topics for condemnation as well as topics for ap plause. It is, nevertheless, encouraged to explore those an nals from a belief that, in the most unrestricted freedom of in quiry, what shall be found good or what bad may be turned to the account of useful example or not less useful admonition ; GEOKGE CALVERT. 167 and especially is it encouraged to this inquiry from the clear est conviction that Maryland can very well afford to have her story disclosed exactly as the truth shall warrant, without abat ing any thing from her just pride in her ancestry ; with in crease rather of that feeling. This would seem to be obvious enough if the reviewer had not called this license of inquiry into question. He manifestly supposes that a native of Maryland is guilty of something like impiety when he ventures to doubt even a theory of assumed merit in the founder. They who are born in Baltimore must, through the mere virtue of the name, take for true any fable that is supposed to enhance the merit of one of the Baltimore family. We of Maryland are specially bound on this score to uphold Henrietta Maria ; Annapolis is pledged in like manner to the fame of Anne ; and the City of Frederick would be un natural if it did not sustain the last lord proprietary against all the disparagements of history. This principle I take to be in volved in the reviewer s allusion to my duty as a " native of Baltimore. Now, when he holds me up to public observation in that character with a purpose to accuse me of " an ungra cious office" in representing the first Lord Baltimore in any light which I might conceive truth to require ; when he charges such an act to be " unfilial," and as manifesting a want of " love for my native State," he not only endeavors to denounce and proscribe me for the exercise of my right of judgment, but, what is much more exceptionable, he makes a direct assault upon that privilege which alone sustains the integrity of history. We can only infer from it that, in reference to our native land, he deems the historian bound to silence when he cannot praise, or to misrepresentation when facts do not concur to support the reviewer s preconceptions of the merit of the sub ject If this be an honest canon of criticism, ;Jl truthful his tory must be handed over to foreigners ; the native American is foreclosed. I submit to no such domination. If our history be unwor thy of praise, let it abide the censure of the world. If our 108 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. predecessors be not entitled to the applause of posterity, let posterity vindicate their own preeminence by their preference of truth over that mean glory which has no basis but falsehood. I utterly repudiate that school which first makes history senti mental in order that it may make it fulsome, and, therefore, false. This I say by way of comment on the morality of the reviewer s reference to my duty as a native of the State ; while, at the same, I deny that I have, in any respect, derogated from the just fame or proper merit of Lord Baltimore. I have other objections to the general character and as sumptions of the review. It is written in a sectarian spirit, wanting essentially in liberality and candor. Its temper is polemic. It aims to convert a point of history into a question affecting the honor of the church, and in that pursuit it lapses into intolerance. It displays an eager exasperation against the author of the Discourse for no better reason than for dif fering from the reviewer upon an historical fact, and, giving that fact a religious hue, it will not extend to the opponent the courtesy of considering his difference of opinion honest. I am, consequently, charged with " professional adroitness to make the worse appear the better cause," with "torturing good and honorable motives into bad," with " using the privi lege of a novelist to make the coinage of my own fancy pass for truth," and other such like periphrases which have become the prescriptive language of irritated cant ever since criticism fell into the hands of gentlemen who could not keep their temper. I hope I need not say to those of calmer nature than the critic, that I had no idea of making a church quarrel out of my Discourse ; that I had no purpose to offend any man s re ligious predilections, nor to stir up the embers of that imme morial feud between two great churches, which unfortunately finds fuel enough without supply from me. I have great re spect for the combatants on both sides of that battle-ground when they are in the due pursuit of Christian duty ; but when they come to cross words, I desire to be considered a neutral GEOKGE CALVEKT. 169 in the field. I take no sides. Not even the vituperation of the review can make me a partisan. I wiote the history of Calvert according to the best view I could get of the facts, without the slightest imaginable prejudice or inclination in re gard to his religion. I should have slept as sound and been altogether as happy if my researches had proved him to be whatever the favorite theory of the reviewer might demand, as to be any thing else in all the categories of historical charac ter. Indeed for the sake of peace and the avoiding of wrath, as it has turned out, I should have preferred to find him ex actly what the critic is determined he shall be. But to be taken to task, as I have been, because I could not falsify my own convictions of the fact, and in the manner especially of the review, I hold that to be an invasion of my right. It argues pretensions which no intelligent citizen of Maryland, whether he be Catholic or Protestant, will, at this day, endure. They do not belong to the nineteenth century, nor to enlightened Christendom. I protest against them as hurtful to the cause of religion in whatsoever creed, and as of fensive to the intellectual freedom of the age. I have another charge to make against the reviewer. He has totally misrepresented, I should more properly say con cealed, the light in which the Discourse has exhibited Calvert. With abundant industry to collate passages from the Dis course, for the purpose of wresting from them unfavorable de ductions as to my view of the conduct of the founder of Mary land, he has not, in a single instance, quoted an expression of mine where my object was to commend the character of the subject. So far from giving me credit for the general as well as discriminate praise by which I have endeavored to exalt the fame of Lord Baltimore, he has taken some pains, in a brief reference to that point, to dismiss it with a sneer, that, although " worthy of the author s best days," it " almost tempts us to suspect it was composed for some other occasion." A candid critic would have at least endeavored to present an outline of my estimate of the character, motives, and con- 8 170 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. duct of the subject of my Discourse : he would have occasion ally allowed me to speak for myself, by using my own lan guage : he would have stated my points, and shown something of my reasoning upon the facts I had adduced : and, above all, he would not have withheld an accurate representation of my side of the question where it differed from his own view of it. I look in vain for such evidences of fairness in the review. A reader of that paper would suppose I had maliciously taken up my pen with no other purpose than to traduce the memory of Calvert, and that, in the face of the most unquestionable his tory, I had labored to exhibit him as " a selfish and despotic statesman," " a sycophant or knave in politics," " an inter ested speculator in charters," and " a temporizing hypocrite in religion." Whether I have succeeded in this charitable office or not, can only be determined by the perusal of my Discourse itself, to which, rather than overload this communication with extracts from it, I must beg leave to refer your readers. And, in the mean time, I affirm that this picture of my Discourse is but the discoloration of an excited and somewhat distempered zeal, as, I think, every dispassionate man will say after he has read what I have written. Before I come to the discussion of the principal topics which the reviewer has selected for the grounds of his attack upon my fidelity of representation, it is proper that I should exhibit an outline of what I hold to be the best ascertained facts in the life of Calvert. We may form our opinions of his character afterwards. . Calvert, at about twenty-five years of age, came into public service as the Private Secretary of Sir Robert Cecil,* a Minis ter of State to James the First. After the death of the minister * I take this occasion to correct an error which will be found in the Discourse, and which has escaped the observation of the critic. I have described Sir Robert Cecil as " Lord Treasurer, afterwards Earl of Salisbury." He was first created Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards Lord Treasurer. GEORGE CALVERT. 171 he was made a clerk of the crown to the Privy Council, and, at the same time, received the honor of knighthood. In 1619 he was appointed one of the Secretaries of State, the other being Sir Robert Naunton. In the next year he was elected to the House of Commons from Yorkshire ; served that con stituency during one Parliament, and, being defeated for the next, in Yorkshire, was returned from Oxford. He contin ued to be Secretary of State until near the end of the reign of James, when, in 1625, he resigned ; was continued as a member of the Privy Council, and created Baron of Baltimore. In 1609 and how long previous to that period we do not know he was a member of the Virginia company of planters ; was still a member of it in 1620, and, on the i5th of July, 1624, was one of the Provisional Council in England erected for the temporary government of that province. In 1621, and, perhaps, before that date, he became interested in a plantation in Newfoundland; in that year (1621) sent out a colony there at his own expense, and continued for some years afterwards to lay out considerable sums of money upon it. After his resignation, he visited Newfoundland in person for the first time, and previous to the year 1630, resided on the island with his family some two or three years. Not finding the cli mate and position of Newfoundland favorable to his scheme of plantation, he repaired to Virginia, in 1628, with a view to make a settlement there, but being uncourteously received by the authorities of the province, he continued his quest of a settlement into Maryland ; returned to England, and finally, in 1632, obtained his charter for this province from Charles the First but died a few weeks before the royal seal was put to it. This, I believe, is an outline of facts upon which all historians are agreed. I have said nothing in this sketch about his opinions, either political or religious, because they constitute the questions upon which the reviewer has come into conflict with the Discourse. In regard to these, I have endeavored to show that his political opinions were on the 172 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. Court side, and against what was called the Country Party : that he was the advocate of Prerogative, as known in the days of King James, against the Privilege of that period. Upon what grounds I have made this statement, I may show here after. His religious opinions I have endeavored also to trace through his history, and to show that, according to the better judgment, he was, most probably from an early period of his life, a Roman Catholic. That, living at a time of very severe proscription of that religion, he followed the example of many eminent and excellent persons in giving as little publicity to his religious tenets as possible in the position he occupied. That he was favored in this design by the friendship of the King, by whom he was affectionately regarded as an able and upright servant. Speaking of him, in reference to this view of his ca reer, I have said : " I much rather incline to the belief, with out in any degree derogating from his integrity, that he was one of those who did not choose to make any very public ex hibition of his faith, preferring the peace and security of pri vate worship to the hazard and contention which a too open manifestation of it might bring. That being a man of moder ate opinions, tolerant and unassuming, a sensible and discreet man, enjoying the confidence, and diligently employed in the service of the King, he thought it the part of prudence to keep his religion as much as possible confined to the privacy of his own chamber." What warrant I may have for this view of his character I shall exhibit hereafter somewhat at large. Now, taking Cal- vert in the light which the facts I have referred to, and the opinions I have assigned to him afford, I have represented him to be, in the first place, a zealous and devoted friend to the general schemes of colonization in America, which con stituted, to a certain extent, the passion of that age : that he indulged this taste " with great assiduity, personal devotion, and at a heavy pecuniary charge ;" that in doing so, " his pur pose was, in part, the advancement of his own reputation, the increase of the wealth of his family, and a laudable and GEOKGE CALVERT. 173 pious zeal for extending the Christian religion and the terri tories of the British empire." I have, in the next place, exhibited him in the light of an adroit, skilful statesman, " characterized not less by the politic management than by the vigor with which he prosecuted his designs," a man "of courage, energy, and skill in the manage ment of men." " The posts which he filled," says the Dis course, "his position and conduct in Parliament, the favor and esteem he seems always to have inspired, demonstrate his ability, as well as his prudence, and give us reason to infer an amiable, well-bred and affable disposition : the character of the government he established in Maryland, and the just sentiments with which he seems to have inspired his son, and the lavish expenditure which he, doubtless, both authorized and provided before his death, attest his liberal views of the rights of conscience, his generosity, and his zeal in the cause of colonization." In the third place, I have exhibited him, in the character of a founder of a State, who, although decidedly inclined to support the high doctrines of Prerogative and enlisted rather against the popular party, and although armed with very strong Bowers of government, was yet a man of such respect for justice, so moderate, wise, and upright in the administration of power, as to provide a system of administration eminently adapted to the protection of the civil and religious rights of the people over whom his authority was to be exercised. I have said that the charter was " planned by Lord Baltimore, and carried into execution by him and his sons, in a spirit of the broadest and most liberal toleration ;" and I have referred to facts, which I have narrated in the Discourse, to show " how justly the father conceived the plan of a benignant gov ernment, and how faithfully the son carried it into execution." And, lastly, that I might not fail in rendering the highest honor to the Catholic settlers of Maryland, for the first example in the world of a State founded upon the principles of true religious toleration, and that I might express my full 174: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. appreciation of the glory to which they were entitled, I have said what the reviewer seems very strangely to find fault with that the " glory of Maryland toleration is in the Charter, and not in the act of 1649 ;" which act was, in truth, that of, what is supposed to be, the first Protestant legislature aided by the first Protestant governor, and which neither originated nor established the toleration of Maryland, nor even protected the people from a very harsh intolerance that immediately followed it. In paying this tribute of applause to the Catholic founders, I have almost repeated that sentiment which the reviewer in a vain attempt to show that my opinions " have undergone a remarkable change within the last eight years" has extracted from "Rob of the Bowl." Commenting, in the Discourse, on this "wisely planned and honestly executed scheme of society,"* I have used this language : " Where have we such a spectacle in that age ? All the world was intolerant of religious opinion but this little band of adventurers, who, under the guidance of young Leonard Calvert, committed their fortunes to the Ark and the Dove, and entered Maryland between St. Michael and St. Joseph (St. Gregory I ought to have said), as they denominated the two headlands of the Potomac, the portals to that little wil derness which was to become the home of their posterity. All the world outside of these portals was intolerant, pre scriptive, vengeful against the children of a dissenting faith. Here only, in Maryland, throughout the wide world of Chris tendom, was there an altar erected and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship. Let those who first reared it enjoy the renown to which it has entitled them." * These words the reviewer has quoted from " Rob of the Bowl," to convict me of contradicting them in the Discourse. Whatever were the powers conveyed to the proprietary by the Charter, undoubtedly the whole practical scheme of the settlement, as manifested in the conduct of the settlers, was benignant ; their polity was wisely planned and honestly executed. It was a little singular that the critic, who charges me with using, in my historical narrative, the privilege of a novelist, should refer to my romance to impugn my history. GEORGE CALVERT. 175 One would suppose that a limner who drew such pictures of a personage of history and of his friends, might escape the charge of any very flagrant detraction ; that, at least, it might be supposed there was no design to portray the principal figure as a sycophant, a knave, or a hypocrite. There was one point, however, in the history of Calvert, as it has been sometimes, and especially of late years, repre sented, upon which I ventured to suggest a doubt ; upon which, indeed, I gathered such evidence as I thought justified me in denying it altogether. TJiis was the story of the con version of Lord Baltimore, in the year 1624-5, from the Protestant to the Catholic faith. This doubt and the argu ments I have brought to sustain it, seem to have particularly stirred up the reviewer s spleen against the Discourse : they furnish the key to the secret of his acrimony. It is not diffi cult to perceive, notwithstanding the pains he has taken to controvert the Discourse in all its parts and topics, that upon this single question of the conversion, he has put the deter mination of the chief merit or demerit of Calvert. The re viewer s belief in the conversion at the period assigned to it, obviously settles his estimate of whatever there is praiseworthy in the character of the subject of the Discourse. The con version once disproved rejected from the history of Calvert, the critic can only regard him as unworthy of respect. My want of faith in this story, the most casual reader of the review will see, leads the writer of that paper to the conclu sion that I have represented Calvert as no better than a hypo crite and a sycophant. Upon this foundation I am accused of desecrating all history, writing " in opposition to the records," coolly demolishing "the character of Lord Balti more," putting " forward my own conceits in opposition to all historians who have treated of the subject" and finally, dis crediting a fact " which has been unquestioned for two centuries" It becomes my duty, under this charge of falsifying what was so well established, to examine the evidence somewhat minutely. When I have done so, the reader will be able to 170 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. judge both of the ingenuousness of the critic, and o"f the pro priety and point of his indignation. As a preliminary, then, I wish it to be noted that my alle gation is that Calvert did not become a convert to the Catho lic faith in 1624-5; that he was known to be a Catholic in 1621 ; that he was even known to be a Catholic before this last date ; and, in fact, that we have no authentic account of any period of his life when it was known that he was not a Catholic ; or, to use the phrase of the discourse, " if he ever was a Protestant, there is no. record of it within our knowl edge." Now, if this be true, it will follow, first, that Calvert did not resign his office of Secretary of State for the reason as signed by Fuller ; second, that he had no scruples, arising out of his religion, to prevent him from serving as Secretary of State ; third, that he was a member of Parliament, a represen tative from Yorkshire first, and then from Oxford, notwith standing his religious opinions ; and lastly, that he maintained himself in the confidence of the King, and in the service of the State, exactly as I have represented him, amidst the diffi culties of that perilous time, by his address, by his modera tion, or by the respect he had won through the faithful dis charge of his trust. The reviewer thinks he could not have been a Catholic while he held these employments and attracted this confidence, without being a dissembler and a hypocrite. I can, by no means, agree to this conclusion. His hypocrisy can only be measured by the extent of his professions. I prefer to con clude that he did not profess much. The critic makes rather a dangerous issue for Calvert s fame, and is no friend of his when he places him in this dilemma. That, however, I leave to himself; my province is to give my authority for what I have said. It may turn out, in the end, that, so far from tra ducing Lord Baltimore, I have entertained a better opinion of him than the reviewer. And now to inquire into the fact. I assert that the only GEOKGE CALVERT. 177 authority for the conversion is Fuller ; that all writers who have spoken of it have taken it from him. If there be a biog rapher or historian who mentions the conversion upon any other authority than that of the short sketch contained in the " Worthies of England," let the reviewer name him and pro duce his proof. I know of none. Fuller s notice of Calvert is brief, scarcely filling one page ; it is inaccurate and defective in known particulars. It is writ ten apparently upon mere report, and makes no reference to any other writer. His narrative, so far as the conversion is concerned, is literally quoted in the Discourse. These are his words : " This place" (the Secretary of State) " he dis charged above five years, until he willingly resigned the same, 1624, on this occasion. He freely confessed himself to the King, that he was then become a Roman Catholic, so that he must either be wanting in his trust, or violate his conscience in discharging his office. This his ingenuity so highly affected King James that he continued him Privy Councillor all his reign (as appeareth in the council book), and soon after created him Lord Baltimore of Baltimore in Ireland." This is every word that Fuller has said upon the subject. It is admitted that Calvert was appointed Secretary of State February 15, 1619, according to our calendar. It is also admitted that he was created Lord Baltimore February 16, 1625, six years after his former appointment. He resigned a short time before this latter date, according to Fuller, because he had then become a Catholic. I have asked, in my Discourse, why should he resign for this reason ? I ask it again. Was there any incompatibility in such an employment with the profession of the Catholic re ligion ? Is there any intelligent Catholic who is willing to ac knowledge that his religion disqualified a British subject from faithfully serving his King and country in such a post as that of Secretary of State ? I am convinced no Catholic will so libel his own faith as to answer this question in the affirma tive. The Secretary of State was, in effect, but the private, 178 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. confidential Secretary of the King. His duties had no connec tion with any article of faith, and there was intrinsically v no more reason why Calvert should abandon his trust on such an occasion, than he should abandon any other post of duty un der the government. To maintain that because he was a Catholic he could not faithfully discharge the duties of such an office, would be to furnish some justification for that proscrip tion of the Catholics which all right-minded men now con sider to have been a foul and unjustifiable persecution. Why should Calvert, resign ? One would suppose, looking to the history of James s reign at that date, that Calvert, so far from finding a motive to resign, would have seen the strongest reason, as a Catholic, to remain at his post. The negotiations for the Spanish match, which were intimately associated with a hope of procuring a relaxation of the penal laws against the Catholics, had just failed. Calvert had been an active and zealous friend of that match, and of course had labored in the cause of his Catholic fellow-subjects to secure, if possible, their welfare. The marriage of the Prince of Wales to a Catholic princess of France Henrietta Maria was at this time in a progress of busy consultation and arrangement. Like the Spanish project, it also fostered the hope of relief to the Catholics of England. This question of relief was in constant discussion. The King was well inclined to it, but was opposed by several of his counsellors. Was this a time for Calvert to resign, because he had become a Catholic ? Certainly not. It was the very time when, if he had the op tion to remain, it was his most conscientious duty to hold fast to his post. The most probable view of his case that most consistent with the history of the period is that he was com pelled to resign, not by the King, but by the party of the Duke of Buckingham. It is known that Parliament had just before this period complained to the King of the number of Catholics in public employment, and had called upon him to dismiss them. Calvert saw that he could no longer remain in office ; that an inquisition was about to be made which would have GEORGE CALVERT. 179 constrained him to avow himself to be what those who were conversant with him in private had previously known him to be a Roman Catholic. His moderation, his reserve, his faithful attention to business, and his keeping himself, as one of his biographers has said, " disengaged from all interests," would no longer avail him. The question as to his religion was about to be so directly put as to leave him no alternative between a frank avowal of the truth and utter disgrace, through a base apostasy. His escape from this predicament was the open declaration of his faith, and his immediate resignation. This would seem to be the foundation of Fuller s story, and all that is really true in it. What follows in Fuller s account is mere gossip, and is calculated to bring into discredit all that he has said. He relates that the King was so pleased with this "his ingenuity" (ingenuousness), that for that reason he re tained him in the Privy Council, and made him Lord Baltimore. If Calvert s conscience would not allow him to hold the post of Secretary of State, how did it serve him as a member of the Privy Council ? The two offices, in the nature of their duties, are identical. A Secretary of State and a member of the King s Council were equally confidential advisers and actors with the King in his most delicate State affairs ; there is no conceivable obligation, arising out of religious opinion, which is not as applicable to one as to the other. No new oath was to be taken in either case ; and if the implied incompatibility of the oath taken by Calvert some years before, with the rela tions which are supposed to have been created by his conver sion, made it a point of honor, as the reviewer insinuates, for Calvert to resign the Secretaryship, the same fact existed to compel him to resign his membership in the Privy Council. And then we are asked, also, to believe that, for " this his ingenuity," the King created him a baron ! Need I show, from the character and conduct of James, that the last act of grace that could possibly be imputed to him would be the public rewarding of one of his own household, for the frank confession of a conversion from the Protestant to the Catholic 180 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. faith ? Nothing is more notorious in history than the absurd vanity of James to be accounted a great theologian. He re sented no offence with so much sensibility as the contumacy of those who, in defiance of his discourses and teachings, slid off from that faith of which he considered himself, peculiarly and eminently, The Defender. When the delinquent, in this wise, was one of his own household, an intimate who lived within the sound of the royal voice, the displeasure was pro portioned to the additional depravity which could disdain such signal advantages. This is the foundation of that hostility against all converts to the Catholic church, to which I have re ferred in my Discourse, and of which I have there given some proofs. Tillieres, the French ambassador at the court of James, in his report to his own government, dated 5th June, 1622, alluding to this sensibility in the King, speaks thus : " I have written to you in my last letter that the Countess of Buckingham was become a Catholic. When the King, and the marquis her son, learned this, they conceived the highest dissatisfaction ; the former as an enemy of our religion, and because // seemed to him a great discredit that a lady of his court, the mother of his favorite, with whom he himself (and he holds himself for a doctor in theology) had so often and so particularly spoken, should abandon her faith : Buckingham, because he knows that if any thing upon earth could undermine his favor, or give it a shock, this very accident is of that de scription."* Now, this is the King who, we are to believe, rewarded Calvert, by promoting him to the peerage, because, in con tempt of the royal logic, and under the preacher s very eye,, he abandoned his ancient faith, and freely confessed it to the King himself ! The resignation of Calvert, I have no doubt, was compul sory, forced upon him by the temper of Parliament and the course, taken by the adherents of the Duke of Buckingham, * Von Raumur s Hist. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol. ii. p. 271 GEORGE CALVERT. 181 who was no friend to Calvert. The grant of the peerage and his continuance in the Privy Council, I regard as the emol lients with which James assayed to soothe Calvert s pride, and to express to him the royal appreciation of his faithful and devoted service. Tlie Secretary, in truth, had not the position or influence at court to enable him to resist the pressure of a party which was even strong enough to intimidate the King. Tillieres says of Calvert : " He is an honorable, sensible, well- minded man, courteous towards strangers, full of respect towards ambassadors, zealously intent upon the welfare of England ; but, by reason of all these good qualities, entirely without consideration or influence"* I have stated my objections, thus particularly, to Fuller s account of the conversion of Calvert, not only because the re viewer lays great stress upon it as the " positive testimony of a veracious witness," who speaks of facts " which occurred in his own time^ but because, also, as I have already said, it is the only explicit testimony upon which the conversion rests, and constitutes, therefore, the only foundation for what is called in the review the unquestioned history of two centuries. It is true there is an attempt made by the reviewer to help out this incongruous story of Fuller s by a few desperate tugs at some other accessible facts which, very obviously, are not sufficiently elastic for his purpose. All his straining will not bring them even within gun-shot of his mark. Indeed, in this matter, I have to charge the reviewer with something of an old soldier s tactics, concerning the fairness of which I have no comment to make. The reviewer may think that criticism approaches so nearly to a state of war as to legalize an occa sional resort to stratagem to make up for deficiency of force. Fuller being the only direct witness, it was a matter of some concern to invest his narrative with as much authority as possible, and so to state it as to give it the credit due to one who knew all about the fact. The critic, therefore, speaks of him as almost entitled to be regarded as an eye-witness of * Von Raumur, vol. ii. 263. 182 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. Calvert s life. " He is an author," says the review, " of great respectability, and was, withal, so decidedly opposed to the Catholic religion, that he would not have mentioned so re markable an occurrence had there been the least doubt of it ; nor would he have omitted to state Calvert s hypocrisy or dis simulation had he been a concealed Catholic. Mr. K. admits that Fuller was his contemporary ; he had, then, the best means of ascertaining the truth of what he asserts in his history" The point of this paragraph is the attempt to give Fuller s testimony the importance and weight of that of a person who could not be mistaken ; and my admission that he was a con temporary of Calvert is used to aid its effect. The critic ought, therefore, to have stated my admission truly. My words were these : " The author of the Worthies of England was his contemporary, though thirty years his junior, and it is of some moment to my argument to remark, was obviously not personally acquainted with him. 1 1 It would have conduced to the candor, though not to the strength of the critic s case, if he had stated this admission with the qualification I gave to it a qualification made expressly to show that he had not " the best means of ascertaining the truth of what he asserts." Fuller is an amusing, witty, and industrious writer, who is not generally deemed of the highest authority. His book is written in a gossipping style, bearing many evidences of care lessness and haste, and is altogether too light in its character to be relied on for accurate history. How far his sketch of Calvert will justify the assertion of the reviewer, that "he would not have mentioned so remarkable an occurrence had there been the least doubt of it" will appear presently. The most careful biographer of that period perhaps the only one to be trusted is Anthony Wood. The Athenae Ox- onienses are written with abundant labor, and with a large amount of critical research. Wood, moreover, is somewhat noted for his endeavor towards impartiality in speaking of the Catholics a fact which the zealots of his time were disposed to use to his disadvantage. I might say, therefore, adopting GEORGE CALVERT. 183 the same kind of argument as that employed by the reviewer, that if " so remarkable an occurrence" as that of the con version and its consequences had been true, much more if there had not been " the least doubt of it," Wood would not have failed to mention it, particularly as he had Fuller s work at hand to lead him to investigate the fact. Yet Wood speaks of Calvert precisely as we might suppose a cautious biographer would speak of one whose religion had been rather concealed from public notice, and thereby laid under suspicion, or regarded with doubt, during such a period as that embraced in the life of this statesman. He does not say Calvert was known to be a Catholic, nor does he affirm the reverse. His statement is, that on the i6th of February, 1624 (1625 N. S.), he was created Baron of Baltimore, " being then a Roman Catholic, or, at least very much addicted to the religion" What do we gather from this as Wood s opinion of Fuller s story of the frank confession, the " ingenuity," and the great gratification of the King who rewarded so much honesty in so signal a manner ? Very clearly, that he did not believe a word of it. All that he felt himself justified in affirming was that Calvert was then a Roman Catholic, or at least favorably in clined to that religion. This is what the reviewer regards as corroborating the statement of Fuller ! But he has found another authentication of Fuller s story, strangely enough, in the letter of Archbishop Abbot to Sir Thomas Roe, which is introduced in a note to the discourse. A perusal of that letter, if it does not help the reviewer, will, at least, inform us what one of the most familiar of Calvert s contemporaries thought of his (Calvert s) religion, and how doubtful he considered it ; it will show, also, what grounds Wood had for speaking with such uncertainty on the same point. Abbot shared with Calvert the intimacy of the King ; had often sat in council with him ; knew him, perhaps, as well as one courtier could know another. His letter, from the in cident to which it refers, we may conclude was written in 1625. " Mr. Secretary Calvert hath never looked merrily 184: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. since the prince s coming out of Spain : it was thought he was much interested in the Spanish affairs. A course was taken to rid him of all employments and negotiations. This made him discontented, and, as the saying is, Desperatio farit monachum, so he apparently did turn papist, which he now professeth, this being the third time he hath been to blame that way. His majesty, to dismiss him, suffered him to resign his Secretary s place to Sir Albertus Morton, who paid him ^3000 for the same, and the King hath made him Baron of Baltimore in Ireland. So he is withdrawn from us, and having bought a ship of four hundred tons, he is going to New England, or Newfoundland, where he hath a colony." This letter presents a portrait, which cannot be mistaken, of a Secretary surrounded by enemies who are envious of his favor with the King, and who feed their grudge against him by assailing him on the score of his religion. It shows him pri vately attached to a proscribed faith, which he was conscious might, at any moment, bring him into peril, and which, though not wholly concealed, was not publicly avowed until the avowal was compelled by the increasing intolerance of the times. It also indicates the sympathy and respect of the King and his desire to mitigate the severity of that party hostility which he could not entirely avert. It argues a stout heart in the critic to challenge this letter as a confirmation of Fuller. Fuller tells us that Calvert, having become a Roman Catholic, resigned his post as incom patible with that profession. The Archbishop says : a course was taken to rid him of all employments, and in order to dis miss him the King allowed him to sell out his commission, and, thereupon, he apparently again became a Catholic. But who does the reviewer say to " this is the third time he hath been to blame in that way ?" In what way ? We have here his answer made with a most perplexed gravity. " This is a sneering inuendo to which converts are accustomed, but very different from saying this is the third time he had become a Catho lic" Certainly ; the difference is very clear ; it is as broad as GEORGE CALVERT. 185 a church door ! But, says the reviewer, this does not prove that Calvert was a Catholic in 1619. Well, I confess I can not say that it does. I surrender that point, and leave the reviewer to enjoy the vantage-ground it gives him. Let us look at his next essay to fortify "the unquestioned history of two centuries." This he rests upon a fact furnished in a note to the Dis course relating to the estate in Longford. By patent, February 18, 1621, the King conferred upon Calvert somewhat over two thousand acres of land in the county of Longford in Ireland, regarding him, as my authority says, " as a person worthy of his royal bounty, and one that would plant and build the same according to his late instruc tions for the better furtherance and strengthening of said plantation." This patent Calvert surrendered to the King, February 12, 1625, four days before he was created Lord Bal timore, and had a regrant thereof in fee simple, dated March n, in the same year. The reviewer has favored us with a scrap of history touch ing this grant. There were nearly six entire counties in Ul ster confiscated to the crown upon the pretext of Tyrone s rebellion. These lands were granted anew to favorites, upon certain conditions of plantation, the principal scope of which was to secure as many English and Scotch settlers as possible, and to exclude all tenants who would not take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. This confiscation was a mere act of rapine and violence. It was dictated by religious hatred, and its object was to strip or spoil the Catholic landlords and tenants of that region. Some years afterwards a still more wicked, because an en tirely unprovoked act of aggression, was perpetrated upon the Catholic proprietors of Longford and some other counties. There was no rebellion on this occasion, either pretended or real, on foot to afford an excuse or apparent justification for this last outrage ; but upon the flimsiest of all pretensions an alleged defect in the titles of those in possession the King 186 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. granted out those lands also to his friends. Whether the con ditions of plantation in Longford were the same as those published some years before in reference to Ulster, I am un able positively to say, although the reviewer asserts they were. I have reason to suppose they were not. This, however, is not material. Now the argument is that Calvert, if he had been a Catholic in 1621, could not have accepted such a grant, and, moreover, that he surrendered the lands in February, 1625, because he was then become a Catholic, and could not con scientiously hold them on the conditions required. But, then, here is another fact, that, although he surrendered the grant in February, it was to take an absolute gift of the same lands in fee, which he did on the nth of March following. The re viewer s reasoning on this point is worthy of remark. " His claims," he says, " upon the monarch s gratitude were greater than when he had first received the grant, and it would have been an act of meanness in the King to permit his faithful minister to lose the benefit of his former bounty, which, prob ably, had thus far been a cause of expenditure rather than a source of profit. His surrender placed it again in the hands of the King, because he could not hold it by its former condi tions ; but there was no impediment to his receiving an uncondi tional title in fee simple" This is a choice exhibition of the reviewer s notions of a man of delicate religious scruples. Calvert s conscience would not allow him to retain a grant which bound him to no severer condition than that of conforming to the wish of his patron, the donor, by selecting his under-tenants from English or Scotch settlers who could take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance ; but he could find conscience enough to take to himself in fee simple and in absolute right, for his own enjoy ment, land which had been plundered by acts of unparalleled fraud and rapine from the persecuted, hunted and despoiled brethren of his own faith ! The wickedness of this scheme of plantation was not in the selection of persons who could be induced to resettle the land, but in the iniquitous spoliation GEOKGE CALVERT. 18 7 of those from whom it was taken. If, therefore, Calvert had any religious scruple on the subject, it would have shown itself in refusing to be made an accessory, an aider and abet tor of the vile scheme of plunder by which the original pro prietors were dispossessed. He would neither have stained his hand nor tainted his soul by any fellowship in the outrage. He would have left that miserable part to some meaner nature who was capable of being lured by the profits of such a com pliance. Calvert s participation in it, therefore, rather leads me to adopt the opinion which many unprejudiced English and Irish writers both have given us ; namely, that the Irish plantations, during the reign of James, were not all conceived or executed in such a spirit of unmitigated injustice as a cursory review of the fact might lead us to suppose : that there were favor able exceptions to this character, and that mixed up with much evil and oppression, they were not unfrequently conducted with evident good policy. James could make what relaxations he pleased in these regulations of settlement ; and we may well suppose he would not be disinclined to exercise this prerogative in such a manner as might suit the wishes of a favorite servant, by so adjusting the terms of the grant as to render it acceptable to the object of his bounty, and enable him to receive it without violating his sense of right. The surrender in 1625 was obviously a mere preliminary to that greater exhibition of the royal favor which in elevating Cal vert to the peerage, designed also to confer upon him some thing more than an empty title, and which accordingly invested him with the absolute grant of a baronial estate. Calvert was created Lord Baltimore on the i6th of Feb., 1625. In less than a month afterward his estates in Ireland were en larged under the new grants of the manor of Baltimore and that of Ulford. These grants were perfected on the nth of March, just a fortnight before the death of the King. They may be regarded almost in the light of a bequest from the monarch to a trusty but somewhat proscribed servant. 188 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. The reviewer makes still one more attempt to sustain the narrative of Fuller. This I believe is his last struggle in that enterprise. He thus presents his argument : " Additional ^evidence that Calvert was not a Catholic in 1620 is found in the period of his parliamentary career. He was elected a member of the House of Commons in 1620. At that period even, if, as a Catholic, he had been eligible to a seat in the House of Commons, it is not to be imagined that an Oxford or a York constituency would have elected a mem ber of that persuasion as their representative, or that in the then state of popular excitement they would have chosen a member who was suspected of being popishly affected. Now his parliamentary services terminated in 1624, the time of his conversion, as stated, and thus this fact may be in voked, as well as the testimony of Wood and Abbot, to con firm the veracity of Fuller." We have no means of knowing what were the sentiments or the spirit of compliance of those whom the reviewer calls an Oxford or a York constituency at that day ; but we may make a great mistake if we suppose that constituencies, in our modern notion of them, had much to do, in the time of James, with popular sentiment of any kind. Occasionally there was some little outbreak of popular opinion which might be turned to the account of free election, and I shall presently pro duce an instance of it, but the returns to Parliament were much more generally obtained by court favor. The doubt expressed by the reviewer, as to the eligibility of a Catholic, is answered by the well-known fact that there were several Catholics in the very Parliament of which Calvert was a mem ber : concealed Catholics, according to the phrase of that period, but not the less on that account, perhaps, sincere in their faith. We have the best reason to believe that Calvert was one of them. The people of England had not much acquaintance with Parliament in those days, and, we may suppose, took no great interest in elections. The second Parliament in the reign of GEORGE CALVKKT. 189 James was summoned on the 5th of April, 1614, and was dis solved on the Qth of June in the same year, without having passed a single act. The next Parliament was that of which Calvert was a mem ber from Yorkshire. It met on the 3oth of January, 1621, after an interval of nearly seven years. In what manner this Parliament was got up may be seen in the Lord Chancellor s (Bacon s) letter to Buckingham, describing the means that had been adopted by the King and his ministers to render the meeting safe and profitable to the King. " Yesterday," says he, " I called unto us the two chief-justices and Sergeant Crew, about the Parliament business. To call more judges I thought not good. It would be little to assistance, much to secrecy. The distribution of the business we made was into four parts." The third matter in the arrangement relates, in the Chancellor s language, to " what persons were fit to be of the House, tending to make a sufficient and well composed House of the ablest men of the kingdom, fit to be advised with, circa ardua regni, as the style of the writs goeth, according to the pure and true institution of a Parliament, and of the means to place such persons without novelty or much obser vation, for this purpose we made some lists of names of the prime counsellors and principal statesmen and courtiers ; of the gravest and wisest lawyers ; of the most respected and best tempered knights and gentlemen of the country. And here, obiter, we did not forget to consider who were the boutfeus of the last session, how many of them are dead, how many reduced, and how many remain, and what were fit to be done concerning them." This, assuredly, is a pretty good recipe for making a Par liament ! We need scarcely, after reading this letter, pursue the investigation how it could happen that the King s Secretary of State should find a seat in the House, or whether the con stituency of Yorkshire were very accurately represented in either their opinions or their prejudices. This Parliament met January 3oth, 1621 ; took a recess from March 27th to 190 . OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. April 1 8th, and adjourned June 4th ; met again towards the last of November, and sat about a month, and then was dis solved. The next Parliament was summoned on the igth of February, 1624 ; was prorogued May 2Qth of that year, and never met again. The court favor which brought Calvert into the preceding Parliament from Yorkshire, failed him on this occasion. Sir John Savile, a leader of the Country Party, opposed him, and overthrew him by a decided majority, not withstanding the aid of Wentworth, afterwards the Earl of Strafford, and the influence of the King. This is the outbreak of popular opinion to which I have referred above, and which was sufficiently powerful to defeat the wishes of the King. The consequences of this defeat were, first, the return of Calvert to Parliament from Oxford, which was found more pliable to the royal will than Yorkshire ; and second, the pro motion of Sir John Savile to the Privy Council, the office of Comptroller of the Household, and finally to the Peerage, which took off the edge of Sir John s opposition, and brought him into a temper of very convenient assentation. This is said to be the first example in English history of that species of corruption which has since been found so serviceable to the crown. From this little history of Calvert s parliamentary career, which altogether did not exceed six months of actual service, there can be no doubt that he was indebted for it exclusively to the influence of the King, and in that view we may find no difficulty in believing that his religious opinions had really no significance whatever in the question of his election. There is, indeed, a letter from Wentworth to Calvert, written during the contest with Sir John Savile and published in the Straf ford papers, which plainly indicates to the Secretary the in terest which the Privy Council takes in his success, and the probability of their interference in his behalf. He writes from Yorkshire : " I find the gentlemen of these parts gener ally ready to do you service. Sir Thomas Fairfax stirs not, but Sir John Savile, by his instruments, exceeding busy, inti- GEORGE CALVERT. 191 mating to the common sort, underhand, that yourself, being not resiant in the county, cannot by law be chosen ; and being his majesty s Secretary and a stranger, one not safe to be trusted by the county. * * * I have heard that when Sir Francis Darcy opposed Sir Thomas Lake in a matter of like nature, the lords of the council writ to Sir Francis to desist. I know my Lord Chancellor is very sensible of you in this business ; a word to him, and such a letter Tvould make an end of all" Oxford, however, was found to be a more sure card, and the Secretary obtained the return from that quarter in time to take a seat in the next Parliament. I have now disposed of Fuller s testimony, and of those auxiliary facts to which the reviewer has resorted for con firmation of it. This is the whole evidence in favor of the conversion : I mean all the evidence that is pretended to be original or authentic. The repetitions of Fuller s statement, by subsequent biographers or historians, such as those of Lloyd, Kippis, Collier, Belknap, and others of the succeeding century, cannot be regarded as giving it any new character. Lloyd, the author of " The Worthies of State," who published his book a few years after Fuller s work appeared, is a com pilation of mere plagiarisms. It copies nearly the whole of Fuller s account verbatim, without acknowledging the theft, and manifestly steals from some other unacknowledged source a few passages of commendation of Calvert, which seem to have been written by some author almost on purpose to show that the Secretary was a Catholic Curing the time he was in office. " Two things," he remarks, " are eminent in this man. First; that, though he was a Catholic, yet kept he himself sincere and disengaged from all interests, and though a man of great judgment, yet not obstinate in his sentiments ; but taking as great pleasure in hearing others opinions as in de livering his own, which he heard moderated and censured with more patience than applauded. Second, that he carried a digested and exact account of affairs to his master every night, and took to himself the pains to examine the letters 192 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. which related to any interest . that might be any ways consid erable. He was the only statesman that being engaged to a de cried party yet managed his business with that huge respect for all sides, that all who knew him, applauded him, and none that had any thing to do with him complained of him" I repeat that I have no knowledge from whom Lloyd bor rowed this sketch, but it is very plain that the writer of it did not mean to describe Calvert as a Catholic only after he had abandoned public life. The whole scope of the language is to show that the Secretary, although a Catholic, while in the management of the public affairs, gave satisfaction to all by his prudence and moderation. I may observe also that Kippis, Collier, and Belknap have incorporated this brief sketch of Calvert into their biographies. The question of Calvert s religion I mean whether he were a converted Catholic or an original one, or, if converted, whether at an earlier or later period of his life has never been one of much significance to the older writers who have had occasion to speak of him. Their attention has been but little given to this point. Bozman is the only one who has really discussed it with any degree of particularity, and his conclusion is in accordance with my Discourse : " It is not probable, therefore, that the principles of the Catholic religion were newly adopted by him in 1624."* All others have either passed it by, or treated it as a matter of small consequence. Hence the incongruity and carelessness of some of the state ments, and the obscurity of others. This topic has only be come conspicuous in tracts upon the life of Lord Baltimore within a few years past. It seems of late to have fired the imagination of some zealous panegyrists as a theme of peculiar capabilities, and he has accordingly been portrayed, with affectionate fervor, in the lineaments of a religious hero ; they have invested him with some portion of that saintly grandeur which gives such lustre to the achievements of a champion * See History of Maryland, vol. i. pp. 245-248, where this subject is examined somewhat at large. GEORGE CALVERT. 193 of the cross. Captivated with this fancy, they have lavished no small amount of exaggeration on the pictures they have drawn of the progress of his conversion, his devotion, his studies, his sacrifices, and his self-immolating heroism. The foundation for all this warmth of description is simply the short paragraph I have quoted from Fuller. It is not pretended that any writer has communicated more than Ful ler, and even of those who copy from him, few have said as much. It has been reserved for our own time to translate his humble prose into ambitious and eloquent poetry, and for grave reviewers to abet this falsification of history even to the extent of quarrelling with all who cannot warm their faith up to that red heat which disables the mental vision from dis criminating between hyperbole and simple truth. " Buffeted," says an orator of this new school, whose oration is republished with special commendation in the April number of the Catho lic Magazine in 1842, "and tossed in the storms of contro versy, he (Calvert) found a secure haven in the bosom of the Catholic church. Soon as conviction converted doubt into certainty, he resigned his office, ceasing to be the servant of his King in order to become the servant of his God. He discarded the emoluments of earth for the rewards of heaven, and exchanged the bright hopes of the present for the unfad ing certainties of the future. He openly avowed his recanta tion, professed his conversion, and became a genuine wor shipper at the shrine of truth." This idea has been expanded since, on anniversary and other occasions, in still more glowing colors, until, at last, it has become one of the reviewer s unquestionable facts of history. In what " storms of controversy" Calvert was tossed he " who kept himself disengaged from all interests," and took " as great pleasure in hearing others opinions as in delivering his own," we shall vainly seek to learn from any accessible record of the past. How " he discarded the emoluments of earth for the rewards of heaven" might fall under rather a 9 194: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. singular illustration in the record which tells us of his forced resignation, his sale of his commission, his Irish patent for the manors of Baltimore and Ulford, his acceptance of the peerage, and the grant to him of what, in his day, was re garded as the principality of Maryland. How, " in ceasing to be the servant of his King, he became the servant of his God" in what respect he was less entitled to the latter character before his resignation than after it would involve us in an equally inconclusive search. I cannot write the history of Calvert in this key. With such facts as I have before me, how can I gratify the demands of the reviewer with such fancies as he has before him ? I wish the truth had given me the advantage of these eloquent themes. If Maryland had been founded by St. Francis Xavier himself, or Calvert could have laid claim to his virtues, I assure the editors of the Catholic Magazine it would have offended no prejudice of mine. I should rejoice to do the subject all the justice its warmest friends could desire. But, I repeat, I cannot write the history of Lord Baltimore to this key-note. Without meaning any thing disrespectful to those who have done so, I must say that these exaggerations are but the offspring of fancy, the foam of anniversary eulogies, of pre meditated and predetermined panegyric. The representation of Calvert as a religious hero is a pure fiction ; it has not a single authority to sustain it. I come now to the evidence on my side of this question ; and here I beg leave to recall the issue between the reviewer and myself. I had said : " Upon the question of the supposed conversion of Calvert there seems to be room for great doubt. I do not believe in it at all. I think there is proof extant to show that he had always been attached to the church of Rome, or at least from an early period of his life." The reviewer, quoting these words from my Discourse, makes this comment upon the author and his mode of treat ng the subject : "The process of reasoning by which he endeavors to CALVEKT. 195 prove his negative is very remarkable. He has employed more industry in the attempt to subvert this simple historical fact (the conversion), than on any portion of his Discourse. Detached scraps of history, questionable dates, the sneers of political and religious opponents, are all marshalled to assist his hypothesis, without allowing to the affirmative of the ques tion the least support from the clear and indisputable records of the time." I have already shown what " this simple historical fact" rests upon, and I have examined what the reviewer calls " the clear and indisputable records." What " the detached scraps of history" are worth, and what are " the questionable dates," will be seen presently. I argued the inaccuracy of Fuller, first, from the character itself of the statement he had made ; and, secondly, from known facts which were incompatible with it. I shall now recapitulate these facts, and add some others to which I had not access when I wrote the Discourse. i. All the children of Lord Baltimore, of whom we know any thing, were Roman Catholics. We must suppose, there fore, in accordance with the reviewer s theory of the conver sion, that these were nurtured and educated in the Protestant faith, and that they all became as suddenly converted as the parent. The reviewer passes by this suggestion in total si lence. Cecil, the eldest, was, in 1624, eighteen years of age. Leonard and George we may suppose to have been old enough to have some fixed opinions upon their own religion ; and so of the others still younger. When we reflect upon the bitter ness of religious prejudice in that day, and how naturally it would be fostered in the schools ; what disabilities, privations and persecution followed conversion, and what rewards and inducements were offered to those who refused to change their creed, surely this argument had weight enough to entitle it to the reviewer s notice, if he could answer it. We are, however, I suppose, to consider it as disposed of under the class of "vague surmises," "erroneous inferences," and "questionable 196 OCCASIONAL, ADDRESSES. dates," where I am quite willing to leave it to be weighed by all candid readers of the review. 2. I gave the direct testimony of contemporaneous writers and historians. Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was a contempo rary. His letter to Sir Thomas Roe I have already exhibited. That he was an enemy to Calvert, I have stated ; that is ap parent in the letter. But still this letter, which was a private communication to a friend, is conclusive not as to the mo tives it imputes to Calvert, but to the fact that Calvert was con sidered, by those who were familiar with his career, as one of doubtful religious opinions, who had previously been known in the character of a Catholic that he was not then converted to that faith. The language of the letter rather imports that he, for the third time, turned Catholic when the prince returned from Spain, which was in October, 1623, and that he now at the date of the letter, and after his resignation openly pro fesses that religion. It was more than a year after the prince s return that Calvert resigned. This letter was introduced into a note accompanying the Discourse, as a fact which tended to corroborate other testimony. I might with propriety have in sisted upon a higher character for it. The language I used on presenting it was : " My view of Calvert s private adhesion to the church of Rome, at a date so much earlier than is ascribed to him by Fuller, is greatly strengthened by the follow ing extract :" The reviewer considers it " a very unlawyerlike way" of turning aside " from the positive testimony of Fuller" to substitute " circumstantial evidence to prove the negative." Every one will perceive that Abbot s testimony is quite posi tive, and is that of an eye-witness. Fuller s is, at best, but hearsay ; and if the " lawyerlike way" is to guide our investi gation, his account would not be received in court at all. 3. I have shown in the Discourse, by extracts from King James s speeches, his strong hatred of those who changed from the Protestant to the Catholic faith, and how different was his feeling towards those Catholics who were not converts. It offend- GEOKGE CALVERT. 197 ed his vanity as a learned divine, which character he affected dur ing his whole reign with abundant pedantry. The extracts I produced were from speeches in 1609 and 1616. I have since been able to add that further confirmation of this trait in his character, which I have quoted some pages back, upon the testimony of Tillieres, the French ambassador, in 1622, and in reference to a case of close resemblance to that which the reviewer imputes to Calvert. It is merely absurd to attempt to evade this argument by railing at the weakness of James s character. Weak it was, without doubt, and contemptible enough ; but those who study his reign will find that his weak ness was quite as much demonstrated by the obstinacy of his prejudices as by any other vice of his character. " Theology," says Lingard, " he considered as the first of sciences, on ac count of its object, and of the highest importance to himself, in quality of head of the church and defender of the faith. * * * To the last he employed himself in theological pur suits ; and to revise works of religious institution, to give di rections to preachers, and to confute the heresies of foreign divines, were objects which occupied the attention and divided the cares of the sovereign of three kingdoms." It is not dif ficult, in view of this character of him, to appreciate the force of Tillieres s remark concerning the change of religion of the Countess of Buckingham, that the marquis, her son, knew " that if any thing upon earth could undermine his favor, or give it a shock, this very accident is of that description." 4. I have referred to the fact mentioned by Rapin, that Gondomar was said, in 1620, to endeavor to corrupt the court with a view to the Spanish match, and that the historian enu merates Sir George Calvert, with the Earl of Arundel, Weston and others, as persons "popishly affected," upon whom, it was charged, that the Spanish ambassador, at that date, at tempted to practise. This the reviewer seeks to elude, by telling us that " this term was used by one political party to designate the other party who were endeavoring to bring about the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the infanta of 198 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Spain," that it was "precisely as the most violent members of one of our two former political parties characterized the Dem ocrats as under French influence, and the Federalists as Brit ish tories." I will not stop to dispute this point with the critic. Prob ably enough the parties often used such phrases in a merely calumnious temper. I have, however, in reference to this case, materials at hand to show exactly what the historian meant when he said Calvert in 1620 was "popishly affected." And even the reviewer s own explanation would show that the Secretary, at this time, was acting with the Catholic party. Early in 1624 March or April the two Houses of Parlia ment presented a petition to the king, praying, among other things, " that all papists should be removed from London and the court, and discharged from all offices of trust." "The King," says Rapin, " had artfully avoided to answer the two principal articles of the petition. Had he consented to these two requests, the face of the court would have been entirely changed. The Duke of Buckingham s mother, who, by her son s means, disposed of all offices, must have been removed. His duchess, also, would have been of this number, as well as one of the Secretaries of State, with many others who had con siderable places at court and in the country."* The only Secretaries of State were Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway. The latter had been joined with Sir Richard Weston, in 1620, in the embassy to Bohemia, and is described by Rapin, in the notice of that embassy, as a Pro testant^ which I find to be asserted also by other historians. Bozman, who adverts to this same passage in Rapin to show that Calvert was not a convert in 1624, takes notice of the fact that Rapin subsequently speaks of Conway as a Catholic. That this is the effect of inadvertence in the historian of Eng land is evident, not only from its contradiction of his first ac count of Conway, but also from its being at variance with the statement of Wilson, upon whose authority he wrote. That * Rapin, vol. ii. p. 230, folio edition. GEORGE CALVERT. 199 author says, in his history of the reign of James, in speaking of the negotiation in Bohemia, and of the two ambassadors : " These two were suited for the employment, happily, upon de sign. Weston being a kind of papist, and Conway a Protest ant, the better to close up the breach between the emperor (who was a Catholic) and the king of Bohemia" (who was a Protestant). There can be no doubt, therefore, that Rapin s allusion, in the passage above quoted, is to Calvert. It is worth remark ing that at this time Calvert was himself in Parliament, a mem ber from Oxford. That Rapin was correct in his reference to Calvert s re ligion will appear conclusively in the next evidence I am able to produce. 5. Arthur Wilson is the most authentic contemporary his torian we have of the reign of James one who is more fre quently quoted than any other. He was attached to the fam ily of the Earl of Essex, who was a conspicuous actor in the af fairs of that reign, and under whose inspection the history of James was written. Although a prejudiced and somewhat in flated writer, Wilson s narrative of facts has been greatly relied on by the principal historians who have had occasion to treat of the same period. His testimony to the religion of Calvert is very positive and direct, as will be seen from the following extracts. Speaking of the original appointment of Calvert as Secre tary of State, he says : " Time and age had also worn out Sir Ralph Winwood, the King s able, faithful, and honest servant and Secretary ; who dying, Sir Robert Naunton, and Sir George Calvert were made Secretaries ; men of contrary religions and factions (as they were then styled), Calvert being an Hispaniolized papist ; the King matching them together, like contrary elements, to find a medium betwixt them."* Again, referring to an event of 1621, he uses this language : * Wilson in Kennet, p. 705. ^00 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. " The King, hearing that the House were hammering upon this remonstrance, went to Newmarket, * * * * and as the business grew up, he had intimation of it from his crea tures in the House, for it vexed his popish Secretary, Sir George Calvert, Weston, and others, to find the House so bitter against their profession."* These extracts leave no doubt as to the meaning of the writer. Before I dismiss the evidence derived from contem porary sources of information, it may be well to mention that Calvert is said by Wood to have written a tract entitled, " The Answer of Thomas Tell Troth." This answer is not, so far as I am aware, now extant ; but the pamphlet of Thomas Tell Troth, to which, I infer, Calvert s was an answer, is preserved. It was a severe attack upon the King for the countenance given by him to Catholics, and particularly recommended to his care and protection the Protestants in France. It was published in 1621. If Calvert wrote the answer to it, such an enterprise would seem to give still further confirmation to the facts I have already adduced to show his religious tendencies. To this surmise, however, I acknowledge that, in the vague state of our information, but little importance is to be attached. I throw it out rather as a question for research than an item of proof. I am now brought to a second era in my investigation. This leads us into the inquiry what is the received historical opinion of Calvert s religion among historians of later date than his contemporaries ? Connected with this inquiry, I have to notice the following remarkable passage in the review : " One of the most extraordinary of the attacks on Fuller s veracity is that founded on the supposed date of Calvert s char ter for Avalon. The zeal with which the orator elaborates his argument upon this topic, requires more time to analyze his quotations and exhibit how utterly fallacious are his con- * Wilson in Kennet, p. 740. GEOKGE CALVERT. 201 elusions than under any other circumstances would be be stowed on them." To say nothing of the bad English and bad grammar of this passage and interpreting it to mean, that my zeal in elaborating my argument has put the reviewer under the necessity of employing more time to analyze the quotations I have to remark that the only thing that may be considered " extra ordinary" in the attack on Fuller s veracity "founded on the supposed date of Calverfs charter for Avalon" is that there is no trace of such an attack to be found in the Discourse. The analysis, therefore, of that attack would require a good deal of time as well as of ingenuity. The reviewer has consequently spared neither. His principal difficulty is to find the attack : the importance of his finding it I shall notice in the sequel. In his search after this desideratum he favors his readers with the following extract from the Discourse : " Now Calvert set tled his colony in Newfoundland in 1621, and Oldmixon and others, among whom I find our own historian, Bozman, have ascribed this settlement to his wish to provide an asylum for persecuted Catholics. Although I cannot discover any war rant for this statement, either in the history of the times or in what is known of Calvert, yet the assertion of it by Oldmixon and those who have preceded or followed him, demonstrates that they did not credit the story of the conversion as given by Fuller : for the author of the Worthies of England dates the conversion three years later than the settlement of Avalon, and affirms it to be the motive of Calvert s resignation of a high trust which, he informs us, the Secretary supposed he could not conscientiously hold as a Catholic.". In this extract, the reader will remark, there is not a syl lable about the " supposed date of the Avalon charter." Upon this quotation the reviewer makes the following comment : " Now the inference that Oldmixon discredits Fuller is entirely unauthorized, as are, also, the deductions from the date of the settlement, 1621, as being the date of the charter. The orator was not aware that Calvert had made a settlement in Newfound- 9* 202 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. land before he obtained a charter for Avalon, and therefore, he has himself fallen into the error of confounding the settlement of Captain Wynne, in 1621, when Sir George Calvert was Sec retary of State and a Protestant, with the endeavor to find an asylum for the practice of his religion in 1626, and later, when he had become a Catholic. But while the orator quotes Boz- man s authority, he has no right to assume 1621 as the date of the charter. Oldmixon does not profess to give the date of the charter. But Bozman furnishes the highest testimony that has been produced to show that the date of the charter of Av alon was 1623." The reviewer then affirms that Oldmixon, so far from con tradicting Fuller, confirms his statement. Then he gives us a particular account of Sir George Calvert s first connection with Newfoundland, the interest he obtained from Vaughan, his sending Captain Wynne there in 1621, and his own subse quent removal all of which he has collected, as I shall have occasion to show presently, from Oldmixon and other writers. And upon the strength of the whole narrative, he winds up with this conclusion : " Having shown the fallacy of the ora tor s statement that Avalon was chartered and settled in 1621, all his arguments founded upon that hypothesis, asserting that Calvert was a Catholic in 1619, and imputing to him oaths which, as such, he could not conscientiously take, must fall. The orator s whole assumption in regard to the date of the Avalon charter and settlement is unauthorized, and the author ities he refers to contradict his statements." Doubtless the reader of the review, after this pertinacious reiteration no less than four times made in this extract be lieves that I have, somewhere in the Discourse, confounded the settlement in 1621 with the date of the charter; doubtless he will believe, also, that I was not aware " that Calvert had made a settlement in Newfoundland before he obtained a char ter for Avalon." This is so emphatically and importunately repeated that it is quite evident the reviewer considers his ex posure of " the fallacy" as one of his great points. The posi- GEOKGE CALVEKT. 203 tive tone of these assertions in the review will suggest a cu rious problem as to the writer s state of mind, when the fol lowing passage from the Discourse is read : " The settlement in Newfoundland, alluded to in this ex tract" (an extract from Fuller, which had just been given), "was made in 1621, in which year, according to the account of Oldmixon, in his British Empire in America, Sir George Calvert sent Captain Wynne thither with a small colony. In 1622 Captain Wynne was reinforced with an additional num ber of Colonists. The charter or grant, however, for this plan tation, it is said, upon some doubtful, or rather obscure testi mony, bears date of the twenty-first year of the King, which would assign it to the year 1623. After the death of James, which was in the year 1625, Lord Baltimore went twice to Av- alon."* Could language be more explicit to show that I was aware of the settlement in 1621, before the date of the charter? Have I fallen into " the fallacy" of stating " that Avalon was char tered and settled in 1621 ?" In this little feat of mystification the reviewer has attempt ed to escape my argument. I said that Oldmixon and other writers have asserted that Calvert made the settlement in Newfoundland as a Roman Catholic, and that that settlement was begun in 1621. The reviewer replies that Oldmixon and the others say only that he was a Catholic when he went him self to Newfoundland, which was after 1625, and that I have confounded the settlement with the date of the charter, and have misrepresented the historians who, in speaking of Cal- vert s religion, refer it to the latter period, when he went to Newfoundland, and not to the former, when he sent Captain Wynne there. The reviewer, indeed, asserts in round terms that, at the date of Captain Wynne s settlement in 1621, Cal vert was a Protestant ; and as he makes this assertion in con nection with his reference to Oldmixon, he means to have it understood that that writer sustains this view. His words * Discourse, p. 18. 204: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. are : " Oldmixon does not contradict Fuller, but, in fact, con firms his statement" This brings us to a very direct issue of fact. Does Old mixon confirm Fuller ? Does he not confirm my statement of Calvert s religion ? I shall show now, not only that I fairly stated the fact from Oldmixon, but also that the reviewer, hav ing Oldmixon and other writers before him, could not have perused them without finding the most complete evidence of the correctness of my statement. I can scarcely conceive that any supposed degree of carelessness in the reviewer can ex culpate his candor in failing to exhibit the testimony of these authorities, and to confess their weight in this question. He has referred, in the course of his review, to several authors ; he has manifestly read them carefully, we should think in reference to the very subject upon which we are at issue. These works are Oldmixon s British Empire in America, the Modern Universal History, Wynne s History of America, Douglass Summary, and Bozman s Maryland. I believe these are all he has quoted in the review, which speak of the settlement of Newfoundland. I have all these works now at hand, and it is my purpose to extract from them a few particulars in regard to this set tlement, which I commend to the reviewer s notice. They will be found to throw a sharp light upon " the simple histor ical fact" that " has been unquestioned for two centuries." i. The oldest of these works is Oldmixon s. It was pub lished in 1708. He gives us this account, vol. i. p. 4 : " Dr. William Vaughan, of Caermathenshire, purchased a grant from the patentees for part of the country (Newfound land) to make a settlement, which, however, he never effected. In 1616, Captain Whitbura was taken in his way from New foundland to Lisbon, with a cargo of fish, and, in the year 1618, he went thither as Dr. Vaughan s deputy ; though whom he was to govern we don t find mentioned anywhere by him self or other writers, or that there was any settlement of Eng lish till two or three years after" (bringing it to 1620-21), GEOKGE CALVEET. 205 "when Sir George Calvert, principal Secretary of State to King James, got a grant of the best part of the island. This gentleman, being of the Romish religion, was uneasy at home, and had the same reason to leave the kingdom as those gen tlemen had who went to New England, to enjoy the liberty of his conscience : he, therefore, resolved to retire to America, and finding the Newfoundland company made no use of their grant, he thought of this place for his retreat; to which end he pro cured a patent for that part of the island that lies between the Bay of Bulls in the east, and Cape St. Mary in the south, which was erected into a province and called Avalon. * * * Sir George, afterwards Lord Baltimore, sent over persons to plant and prepare things for his reception ; and, in 1621, Cap tain Wynne went thither with a small colony, at Sir George s charge, who seated himself at Ferryland." Here we have in this narrative Sir George Calvert, Secre tary of State, a Roman Catholic, uneasy at home, resolving to retire to America, and thinking of Newfoundland as a place of retreat ; his attention directed to this spot because the New foundland company made no use of their grant. Of course all this is previous to his making any settlement. Then he is described as getting a patent for a plantation there. We are then told that Sir George, who was afterwards Lord Baltimore, sent Captain Wynne over, in 1621, to prepare things for his reception. In Purchas Pilgrims, vol. iv. pp. 1882-1891, we have Whitburn s account of this settlement in 1621, and a ref erence to some of Captain Wynne s letters to Sir George, the first of which is dated in that year. Now I ask, does not this narrative most distinctly affirm that Sir George Calvert was a Roman Catholic before he sent Captain Wynne to Newfoundland ? Does this fact confirm, or does it contradict Fuller ? 2. Douglass is the next writer in point of date, having published his first edition of the Summary in 1739. His notice of Calvert is too brief, confused, and desultory to be quoted. It merely speaks of him as a Roman Catholic, 206 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. without the slightest insinuation that he was ever any thing else. 3. The Modern Universal History, published in 1763, gives us the following narrative : vol. xxxix. p. 249. " Next year Dr. Vaughan purchased a grant from the pat entees of part of the country included in their patent ; settled a little colony at Cambriol, in the southernmost part of the island, now called Little Britain, appointed Whitburn, Govern or, but made no progress in extending colonies and clearing plantations. About the same time Sir George Calvert, a Ro man Catholic, petitioned the king for a part of the island lying between the Bay of Bulls to the eastward and Cape St. Mary to the southward, in order that he might enjoy that freedom of conscience in this retreat which was denied him in his own country. * * * * Before his departure from England, Sir George sent Captain Edward Wynne with a small colony, to New foundland, to prepare every thing necessary for his reception. * * * The following year he was reinforced with a number of men, and supplied with stores and implements by Captain Powel, and soon after he writes to his superior, Sir George Calvert, in the following terms" (here is an extract given from a letter dated Aug. 17, 1622, as the same is found in Purchas). * * * " A salt work was erected by Mr. Wynne, and brought to great perfection by Mr. Hickson, and so delighted was the proprietor, now Lord Baltimore, with the flourishing state of the colony, that he removed thither with his family." In this rapid sketch of the settlement, we have, as before, Sir George Calvert a Roman Catholic, who petitions the king, which, of course, is previous to his settlement ; sends Captain Wynne thither to prepare for his reception ; is afterwards cre ated Lord Baltimore, and goes to the settlement himself. 4. Next we have Wynne s British Empire in America, pub lished in 1776, and there we read as follows, vol. i. p. 44. " The next year a little colony was founded at Cambriol, on the southern part of Newfoundland, of which the same Whitburn was appointed governor. Sir George Calvert (in GEORGE CALVERT. 207 this edition it is misprinted Sir George Vaughan), a Roman Catholic, also obtained the grant of that part of the coast lying between St. Mary s to the southward and the Bay of Bulls to the eastward, and the Puritans resorted thither. Captain Ed ward Wynne arrived before Sir George, with a small colony at Newfoundland, to prepare every thing necessary for him. * * * Lord Faulkland, lieutenant of Ireland, also sent a colony to Newfoundland ; but at this time the proprietor, who was made Lord Baltimore, returned to England, where he got a grant of Maryland. 5. The last of the authorities to which we have referred is Bozman, who has written with more research, more particulari ty, and, in general, with more accuracy than any other histori an of what relates to Maryland. In his first volume of the His- ry of Maryland, p. 232, in noticing the events of 1621, he thus introduces Sir George Calvert : " It was in this situation of things that Sir George Calvert, who was now one of the principal Secretaries of State, and of the Roman Catholic religion, influenced probably by the recent example of the emigration of the Puritans to New England" (alluding to the notable emigration of 1620), " contemplated a settlement of Catholics in Newfoundland." This Roman Catholic gentleman, a Secretary of State, in fluenced probably by the recent example of the Puritans, con templated a settlement in Newfoundland. Of course, all this was before any grant was obtained, or colony sent out. A few pages afterwards p. 241 Bozman continues his narration : " Previous, however, to his own embarkation for the coun try granted to him, he thought it most proper to send a small colony thither under the command of a Captain Edward Wynne, who seated himself and colonists at a place called Ferrylancl." Bozman has fallen into some uncertainty in regard to the date of Wynne s first voyage, by supposing that it may have been in the year of the date of the charter, 1623. The reviewer seizes upon this doubt of Bozman s, imputes to me " the fallacy" of confounding the settlement by Wynne, and the date of the char- 208 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ter, and leaves us to infer that, at the date of the charter, Cal- vert was already a convert ; that, in fact, the date of the char ter was coincident with that of Fuller s story of the conversion. If Bozman had seen Wynne s letter from Newfoundland to Sir George, of the date of 1621, he could have had no difficulty on the subject But even ascribing the settlement to 1623; furnishes no help to the reviewer, because Calvert served a year after the date as Secretary of State, and was a member of Par liament from Oxford in 1624, during which period, the review er affirms, he could not have been a Catholic. So that even if he had not sent Wynne out with the colony until 1623, when he obtained the charter of Avalon, being then a Roman Cath olic, and having a purpose to make an asylum for the perse cuted Catholics, that fact alone would show that Fuller s story of the conversion in 1624 is incorrect. The testimony all con curs to indicate that he was a Catholic while he held the post of Secretary of State and served as a member of Parliament, and, consequently, that he did not resign on account of his conversion. Could the reviewer be ignorant that Calvert was represent ed in these works as a Roman Catholic, when he made the set tlement of Newfoundland ? Was the reviewer ignorant that that settlement was made as early as 1621 ? And is not this my whole argument drawn from that incident in the history of Calvert ? Is there any extraordinary zeal in the elaboration of this argument manifested in the Discourse ? Is it not a sim ple historical fact, perspicuously set forth, and sustained by the best authorities to which I had access ? Has the reviewer found the slightest expression, in a single historian, to contra dict the fact that Calvert was a Roman Catholic when he sent Capt. Wynne to Newfoundland ? Yet I am charged with tak ing " an advantage unworthy of my candor," when, in the pres ence of a large public auditory, I venture to give the same ac count of Calvert s religion which I find in all the books I have consulted : and my enterprise is calumniated by the imputation of using that " opportunity to mystify our history, and to put GEOKGE CALVERT. 209 forward my own conceits in opposition to all historians who have treated of the subject." I have no recriminations to make, but I would suggest a simple admonition to the review er, against allowing the rashness of his zeal, or the acerbity of his temper, to commit him again to the indiscretion of such an attack. I have now concluded all I desire to say in reply to the principal point of the Discourse controverted in the review. The fact we have been discussing, every one will perceive, is one of predominant consideration in the true historical esti mate of Calvert s character. I make no deductions, but leave it to ever*y reader to form his own conclusions of the merit of the character which the whole survey of Calvert s life presents. I have very freely given my own opinion in my Discourse. I have yet to notice a few minor points in the reviewer s assault upon me ; and as I have already occupied more space in this reply than I proposed to myself, I will endeavor to be very brief with what remains. Indeed I should not deem these minor questions of sufficient importance for remark, were it not that where so much has been misunderstood, I have some reason to apprehend that my silence might furnish occasion for as much vituperation as, unluckily, has befallen me for what I have uttered. The reviewer first assails the Discourse for the position as sumed in it that the settlement of Maryland " did not owe its conception either to religious persecution or to that desire, which is supposed to have influenced other colonies, to form a society dedicated to the promotion of a particular worship." This is said to be "a negative and novel proposition" which is sought to be established by " vague surmises and erroneous in ferences, prejudicial to the character of Lord Baltimore and subversive of facts not only never disputed but adduced by most credible historians to sustain his high character." Now all historians who have ever spoken of the settlement, I believe without a single exception, say that Lord Baltimore, being disappointed in his establishment in Newfoundland by 210 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. reason of the rigor of the climate, the barrenness of the soil, and the exposure to attack, was, therefore, induced to look for a more favorable locality : that, with this object, he went to Virginia, and afterwards to Maryland. If this be true, how can it be said that the conception of the settlement in Mary land is to be attributed to religious persecution ? Nor was it to form a society dedicated to a particular wor ship. If there be any historian, credible or incredible, who affirms that it was, the reviewer ought to have favored us with his name. We have quotations in the review to show that Calvert went first to Virginia to settle : this fact is, indeed, not disputed by any one. Why did he go to Virginia if his object was to make a settlement dedicated to the promotion of a particular worship ? Did not Lord Baltimore know that Vir ginia, at that day, would not tolerate such a settlement ? I do not deny that, he contemplated, with satisfaction, the idea that in Maryland, the persecuted Catholics would find an asylum. My denial is that that was not his special object in founding the colony, I believe that he contemplated an asy lum for the persecuted of all Christian sects : that his purpose was, in the beginning, to make a liberal, tolerant government, without the slightest reference to sects ; that the foundation of the province upon a particular religion was not in his view. I have said, notwithstanding all the authority upon the subject, I did not concur in believing that the settlement in Newfound land, or in Maryland, was made with reference to a particular religious community. My argument was and is, that neither the charter, nor any thing that was done under it, indicates any such purpose. Calvert s invitation to emigrants, the earliest announcement of his plans, as they have been transmitted to us, show, in the most unequivocal terms, that his wish was to encourage emigration without reference to religious opinion. If there is extant a word from him or his successors which would imply that his design was to make a Catholic colony, I have not met with it. Yet, undoubtedly, if he had chosen, he had the power to confine his grants of land to Catholic settlers. GEORGE CALVERT. 211 It is in allusion to this that I took occasion to express, in " Rob of the Bowl," that commendation of Lord Baltimore s liberality which the reviewer, with some notion that it contradicts what I have said in the Discourse, has quoted from vol. i. p. 52, of that work. I repeat now what I wrote then in 1838 that Lord Baltimore " erected his government upon a basis of per fect religious freedom," and that " he did this at a time when he might have incorporated his own faith with the political character of the colony, and maintained it by a course of legis lation which would, perhaps, even up to the present day, have rendered Maryland the chosen abode of those who now ac knowledge the founder s creed." A very little circumspection in his conditions of plantation would, without the slightest vi olation of his charter, have filled the province chiefly with Catholics, and perhaps have secured their preponderance in the control of its affairs. He chose the more liberal and generous but, we have reason to believe, the more disastrous policy. In this representation of Calvert I did not suppose I was derogating from his fame, but, on the contrary, placing it upon the highest level with those statesmen who have won the praise due to the benefactors of mankind. I have said also in another part of the Discourse that " the glory of Maryland toleration is in the charter, not in the act of 1649." This expression draws down upon me no small amount of the reviewer s displeasure. I cannot follow him through all the mazes of his misapprehension and consequent misrepresentation of my argument. It is very clear that he entirely mistakes the meaning of my remark. The fault may be mine in not speaking with sufficient perspicuity, although I supposed I had made myself intelligible when I said : " It was to the rare and happy coincidence of a wise, moderate, and energetic Catholic statesman, asking and receiving a charter from a Protestant monarch, jealous of the faith, but full of honorable confidence in the integrity of his servant, that we owe this luminous and beautiful exception of Maryland to the 212 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. spirit of the colonization of the seventeenth century." I think a reader of the Discourse would not be at a loss to say that I had ascribed the toleration of Maryland to the circumstances connected with the grant of the charter, rather than to any specific provision in it. That the toleration was in the char ter because it was a grant from a Protestant prince to a wise Catholic statesman. I argued to show that it was from this antagonism the liberal principle manifested in the establish ment of the province was evolved. That a Catholic gentle man undertaking to administer a charter granted by a Protes tant king, the result only could be religious toleration. The charter guaranteed protection to the English Church ; it, there fore, bound a Catholic administrator of it to the greater cir cumspection as regards religious opinions. It gave him, among other things, the exclusive right to authorize the li censing and consecrating of chapels of the Church of England. It gave him the whole patronage and right of presentation to benefices of that Church. How was it possible that such grants as these could be followed up by religious intolerance on the part of the grantee ? He was compelled by the char ter to respect the rights of members of the Church of En gland : he could not, then, but respect the rights of all other Christians. That was my argument, and that was what I meant when I said " Maryland was the land of the sanctuary," that " all Christians were invited within its borders, and that there they found a written covenant of security against all en croachments on their rights of conscience by the Lord Pro prietary and his government." This was the charter as framed by Lord Baltimore himself. Of what avail is it, in the argu ment of the reviewer, to reply that there was nothing in the laws of England, until the reign of Queen Anne, to prevent a Catholic from holding an advowson. The point of my ar gument was that Charles granted these privileges and powers to Calvert, and that that showed his confidence in the proprie tary s moderation, liberality and toleration. I argued further that such grants as these from a Protestant prince to a Cath- GEORGE CALVERT. 21-3 olic proprietary raised a strong obligation of honor on the proprietary s side that he would not abuse that power by intol erance. Reverse the case, and what would the reviewer say if a Catholic monarch had given to a Protestant proprie tary the exclusive right to license Catholic chapels, and the sole right to present all benefices in the Catholic church ? Would he not regard it as proof of great confidence in the in tegrity, the impartiality, and in the liberality of the grantee ? This is the sum of the argument in support of that toleration which I have deduced from the charter and its history. I have one word more as to the political character of the charter. It contemplated a government in Maryland with an hereditary executive. It authorized the creation of EQ order of nobility. It empowered the proprietary to summon mem bers to the legislature by special writ, without submitting the person so summoned to an election by the people ; and, not withstanding the reviewer s denial of this, nothing is more notorious in our history than the fact that members were so summoned. The cases may be seen, and the form of the writ may be read in Bozman.* It gave to the proprietary an abso lute negative on all laws : it clothed him with power to make special ordinances without the sanction of the assembly : and the proprietary, also, as we are informed in the tract entitled " Virginia and Maryland," printed in London in 1655, exer cised the power of dispensing with the laws. Upon a view of these and other features of the charter adverted to in the Dis course, I said : " We may affirm of it that, however beneficial it might be under the ministration of a liberal and wise pro prietary, it contains many features which but little coincide with our notions of free or safe government." For the expres sion of such an opinion I am charged by the reviewer with de tracting from Lord Baltimore s fame, and representing him as " a selfish and despotic statesman." Well ; I have no mind to make points with him on this question. It is a matter of opinion. I have myself a strong repugnance to the doctrines * Vol. ii. p. 100, 101. 214 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of the high prerogative school. I have been educated to be lieve that in the popular privilege, as understood in English history, are to be found the true principles of free government. I do not blame any man for differing from me. It may be the result of education, temper, complexion of mind ; and I freely accord to the reviewer the utmost sincerity in his partiality for the prerogative side. I have shown that Calvert, invested with all this power, had no disposition to abuse it ; I still repeat, however, that such powers do not accord with the more gener ally received notions of the present time as to what constitutes free and safe government. I forbear saying any thing, at present, on the subject of the act of 1649. That I propose to examine on some other occa sion, when, I think, I shall be able to show that it was a con strained act, contrived as a measure to protect the lord pro prietary and his friends at a very critical period ; that it was the act of a Protestant legislature, with a Protestant governor at their head : and that it did not establish toleration in Mary land. I think I shall be able to show that the act itself, in many respects, is exceedingly intolerant, and is of such a char acter as the present day would not endure upon the statute book. But I will not bring it into this discussion. I find that I have unwittingly fallen under censure for speaking in the Discourse of the " Romish" church. The re viewer does me no more than justice in supposing I would not use this phrase where it might be construed into disrespect. I was not aware that it had such an import. It is in constant use by the most liberal and impartial Protestant writers, and I have met it even in the works of Catholics. It is sufficient for me to say that I am too Catholic in all my feelings to apply a term of derision or reproach to any Christian sect ; and I am sure I have afforded more than one proof to the Roman Cath olics of Maryland, that, although differing from them in my faith, I cherish for them, and their connection with our history, all the respect due not only to their most sacred rights of con science, but also to their noble efforts in times past, to secure GEOKGE CALVERT. 215 to all others the same invaluable privileges. The term I have used, the reviewer remarks, is " quite innocent in itself," and, as he certainly had no reason to believe it was used otherwise than innocently by me, it was scarcely worthy, it strikes me, of so grave a comment as he has made upon it. I have now fulfilled my design of answering the principal objections raised against my Discourse by the review. In concluding, I take occasion to say that the critic has somewhat misapprehended the moral of my story for it is mine of the Student of Gottingen. If he will examine it again he will find that the scholar was damned, not for writ ing in opposition " to the unquestioned history of two centu ries," but for writing truths that were unwelcome to his read ers. He will discover that the devil had the wit to see that he could set the world against the poor student who should be so bold as to write upon topics that did not flatter their self- love. I have no fear that this will be my case, for I cannot doubt that the reviewer himself will be pleased to be rescued from a path of error even by my aid. If he shall persist, how ever, to walk in darkness, I hope he will show some sympathy for the hardship of the dilemma of one who, like myself, is placed between the hazards of offending men by the truth and his own conscience by misstating it. In this I share the mis fortune bewailed by the Venerable Bede : " Dura est enim, con- ditio historiagraphorum ; quia, si veridicant, homines provo- cant ; si falsa scripturis commendant, Dominus, qui veradicos ab adulatoriis sequestrat, non acceptat." J. P. KENNEDY. Baltimore, May 15^, 1846. .216 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. THE LIFE OF WILLIAM THOM: A LECTURE DELIVERED FEBRUARY 4:, 1846, BEFORE THE ASBURY SABBATH SCHOOL. MY subject is drawn from humble life. It relates to the hopes, the morals, the genius and the ambition of the poor. I have chosen it not only because it has intrinsically a claim to the consideration of every true-hearted man, but chiefly because I desire to introduce to your notice a very ex traordinary person, in whose history may be found at once an exposition of the extreme hardships and sufferings of poverty, and a beautiful illustration of the genius that commends its cause to the sympathy of mankind. I thank my God, the story I have to tell is, in no wise, American. It belongs to a foreign land ; and the telling of it will suggest to your minds and hearts a daily motive for grati tude to Heaven, that our lines have been cast in more pleas ant places that on this shore of the Atlantic, misery and vir tue hold no frequent companionship that patriotism has no call to the duty of asserting the rights of an oppressed peo- pie. From what causes, it is needless for us to inquire, social life, on the opposite coast of the great ocean which divides us from Europe, has long ago fallen into an organization that has made a sad difference between rich and poor. A difference not temporary not of a generation nor an age not mitiga- ble by bringing rich and poor, through successive shades, each to the confine of the other but a permanent, broad, organic difference a difference made perpetual by caste, heritable WILLIAM THOM. 217 and by no means to be obliterated ; made sorrowful to the poor man, not more by the huge toil necessary to gather little food, than by his near view of the riotous living and unchari table pomp of the rich man who prescribes to him his law and compels him to obey it. From whatsoever causes, operating in the beginning and still operating in the sequel, this difference has become a badge of European polity as distinguished from our own. It has, therefore, presented to us a world of ad venture of which we have no type in America. We can scarcely believe the tales of wretchedness that reach us from that further shore ; with greater difficulty still, believe that these sufferings are without remedy. At first we thought them overwrought narratives exaggerations of those prone to make bad appear worse. But the proof came in so many ways from the lips of the emigrant, from government reports, from artless statements of fact, and from not less true fiction, that our once incredulous community have come to familiar con viction of the truth, and bless themselves that God has given us " a world so bright and fair," and shielded us against the wrong and wretchedness of these unhappy foreign lands. When I say this difference between the rich and the poor is the badge which distinguishes European polity from our own, I do not mean to assert that there are no exceptions in European society from that severe condemnation which makes the lot of the man in humble life perpetual through his chil dren. There are great and noble exceptions great and noble from the very conquests they have made over the rigorous prohibitions of their estate. Men are sometimes gifted with a bold and enterprising genius which no barriers can confine with a virtue so heroic, with a mind so expansive and irre pressible that no conventions of society can restrain them. The sacred fire has often been kindled in the censer of an humbly born heart, whence it has sent forth the richest per fume that- has been offered at the altar of human greatness. Fortune, even, has sometimes in its caprices elevated to high rank and influence those whom virtue, wisdom and genius 10 218 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. have disowned. These are exceptions, and only attract our attention the more painfully to the state of the millions they leave behind. Perhaps in the name I am about to mention, one of these exceptions will hereafter be acknowledged. Few persons, in this assembly, I presume, have ever heard of William Thorn still fewer know any thing of his history. I know him only from a book which has excited some sensation in England and Scotland " Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-loom Weaver" a book which has found but little access as yet to American readers. From that volume I gather some loose fragments of a life worth a most earnest study ; and out of these I design to make up this evening s lecture. William Thorn is now forty-seven years old. Thirty-seven of these years have been spent at the loom. A poor Aber deen boy, pent up at ten years of age, and consigned to the everlasting ply of the shuttle and monotonous dance of tread les, to find his way through this world with such amount of comfort and luxury as might be purchased out of a stipend varying between twelve shillings a week and five shillings, and with all the leisure left to him after fourteen hours a day given to the fabrication of cotton cloth ! Thirty-two years thus employed brought him to the scale of comfort, described by himself in these words ; it is in the year 1 844 : " I occupy two trim little garrets in a house be longing to Sir Robert Elphinstone, lately built on the market stance of Inverury. We have every thing required in our humble way. Perhaps our blankets pressed a little too lightly during the late severe winter but then we crept closer to gether. That is gone tis summer now, and we are hopeful that next winter will bring better things." This is a cheerful note from a patient, resigned, Christian man, with three children, in his " two trim little garrets," and with his light blankets " during the late severe winter" hope ful for the next year. His estate, you may infer from this, was not greatly to be WILLIAM THOM. 210 envied for worldly comforts. And this is what he had arrived at in forty-two years of existence. This Aberdeen boy was uneducated at least in scholastic learning. How could he be taught in schools, with these fourteen hours exacted by the shuttle for six days in the week ? There was that blessed seventh day the most blessed of all the poor man s gifts which gave him its Sabbath school, and with it a small gift of instruction, more precious than all other instruction in the same space. In that Sunday he could learn to read and write, and thus explore other men s thoughts and make some record of his own. The Sabbath school ! how dear is it to the heart of that man which, but for its aid, had continued dumb ! One hour in that school is worth, to the aspiring and longing mind of the poor child of genius, days spent by the indolent sons of wealth in the common academy. The min utes employed in it are made more fruitful by the piety of those who direct them they are blessed by the sacred charity of the day. Their lessons fall upon the thirsty mind like the dews of Heaven, and bring forth a richer growth of goodly issues under that double benediction which blesseth him who gives as well as him who receives. The Aberdeen weaver boy, therefore, was not wholly uneducated. He had many long hours for thought, as the shuttle flew from hand to hand, and his seventh-day school had given him the key to unlock the casket of human wisdom. His hours stolen from mid night witnessed the zeal with which he gathered the gems from that casket ; and daily and nightly in the day by earn est meditation, in the night by impassioned study in the le gends of written lore he explored and fashioned the native and imbedded treasures which God had planted in his own mind. If, therefore, not among the richest in scholastic ac complishment, he gradually became among the richest in the wealth of a contemplative, earnest heart, and of a tender and graceful fancy. Thus it was that William Thorn became a poet, even un consciously to himself. Cheered by no friend, emboldened 220 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES*, by no patron, knowing nothing of the world but its hard labor, he, a thoughtful, diffident man, never daring to dream of fame, nursed a true poetic fire in his bosom, which, as yet warmed no pulse but his own, and which he himself could scarcely value because he could bring it into no comparison with the world around him. For aught that he knew, his gifts were but the common inheritance of the million beyond the circle of his observation ; for aught that he knew, the jewels of his thought were out-lustred by more costly brilliants, which greater leisure and more auspicious studies had heaped into the minds of that vast society which his poverty had never ventured to approach. So, for some years in manhood, he continued v/orking working at the loom ; whetting his fancy, all the while, in the little round of his own conceptions, and giving vent to feelings of glee and sadness in the songs and touching melodies which the genius of Scotland had brought forth from minds once as humble as his own. The songs of the Ettrick Shepherd, and, "nearer and dearer to him still," those of his fellow- craftsman, Tannahill, awaked his heart to raptures which were not long in- breaking forth in kindred melody of his own. " The Braes of Balquidder" these are his own words, when speaking of this period of his life " and Yon Burn- side, and Gloomy Winter, and the Minstrels 7 wailing ditty, and the noble Gleneiffer Oh, how did they ring above the rattling of an hundred shuttles ! Let me again," he ex claims, "proclaim the debt we owe those Song Spirits as they walked in melody from loom to loom ministering to the low- hearted." These promptings had, at last, their effect. They lured him to a trial of his own skill. He breathed some notes that even startled himself. Scarcely knowing that there was music in them certainly ignorant that there was a divine melody there he was nevertheless pleased. He describes this pleas ure in artless but significant phrase " as if some boy, bolder than the rest, should creep into the room where lay Neil WILLIAM THOM. 221 Gow s fiddle, and touched a note or two he could not name. How proud he is ! how blest ! for he had made a sound ; and more, his playmates heard it !" Then came an ambition to appear in print. The humble, unconscious Aberdeen weaver, begins to feel the desire of fame that second instinct of genius, the first revelation of his resolve to assert the claim to his birthright. His name had been actually heard outside of the factory gates this was enough. " Why should his powers live and die in this black boundary ? his song not be heard beyond the unpoetical brick walls of a factory ? It was settled. He is off, The shuttle for a time may go rot. No heed, no care of the hun gry hours and hard weaving that must follow. There he goes, and over his beating heart lies a well-folded, fairly- copied version of his first-born, as he wends his way to the printing office of the Aberdeen Journal" At the appointed day the Journal came ; " he groped for the Poor Man s Cor ner, and was blest the song was there." This is graphic and natural. All young writers feel some self-glorification at this little first advance on the road to im mortality the getting into print. Ordinarily, it is a bubble in the river " one moment here, then gone forever." But to a man of real genius, with the patent of fame yet unread, but treasured in his heart, this first appearance is an event of some moment. Who would not lay up, with something more than ordinary reverence, Shakspeare s first printed line Mil ton s Burns s even though we should find but little presage in them of the noontide glory ? But even yet the Aberdeen weaver is unconscious that he has become a poet. There are many trials in store for him before he arrives at that. A very dreary time succeeds to this. We have now a tale of suffering to disclose, such as I have seldom read. I propose to make you acquainted with it, as much as I can in his own words, because it will lead you to a better judgment of the man. The trials of poverty its sufferings, fall even upon the most stolid natures, with a crush 999, OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. that often annihilates the heart : but upon a sensitive, quick and instructed man, whose very perfections strip him of the common defences against wretchedness, few persons can truly estimate the bitterness of their ordeal, or justly commend the piety which bears them with patience. The story of Thorn, in the passages of his life to which I am about to advert, is the most melancholy exposition I have ever seen of that fatal difference of condition to which I have referred in the opening of this lecture, and which exists under heavier afflictions in the British Islands than in any part of the world. The year 1837 was one of dreadful calamity to the weavers and other working people in Scotland. The commercial diffi culties of the United States, which we so well remember by the suspension of specie payments, and by the many failures which occurred among our most extensive trading establish ments, had, among other causes, a large share in spreading distress among the manufacturers of Great Britain. Six thou sand looms were stopped in one week in Dundee and its ad jacent country. Wretchedness unexampled was the conse quence to a large body of operatives. A most unhappy lessening of the stinted comforts of the whole mass of that portion of Scottish society necessarily followed this extraor dinary diminution of labor. Thorn was then a married man, and father of a family. His wages were five shillings a week. He lived or rather breathed and worked in the little village of Newtyle, near Cupar Angus. The five shillings were not always certain sometimes failed altogether. Now hear his own narrative : " Imagine a cold forenoon. It is eleven o clock, but our little dwelling shows none of the signs of that time of day. The four children are still asleep. There is a bed cover hung before the window, to keep all within as much like night as possible ; and the mother sits beside the beds of her children, to lull them back to sleep whenever any shows an inclination to awake. For this there is a cause, for our weekly five shillings have not come as expected, and the only food in the house WILLIAM THOM. 223 consists of a handful of oatmeal, saved from the supper of last night. Our fuel is also exhausted. My wife and I were conversing in sunken whispers about making an attempt to cook the handful of meal, when the youngest child awoke be yond its mother s power to hush it again to sleep, and then fell whimpering, and finally broke out in a steady scream, ren dering it impossible any longer to keep the rest in a state of unconsciousness. Face after face sprang up, each, with one consent, exclaiming Oh mither, mither, gie me a piece ! How weak a word is sorrow to apply to the feelings of myself and wife during the remainder of that dreary fore noon !" This destitution was not to be endured by a man so mould ed as the father of this family. The world had many evil chances in it, but none so dreary as not to be encountered now by one in such a condition. This handful of oatmeal ; this cheating the noontide light by the ragged bed cover hung across the window to simulate night ; this encouraging; of sleep, that the wolf at the door might not be seen by four squalid and hungry children ; and this watching of father and mother in what agony ! over the restless and slumber-surfeited infant do they not exhibit to us a picture which might ex cuse a desperate resolve to tempt any other fortune blindfold ? He has, therefore, determined to quit his lowly roof and bide the elements unhoused. Taking all he had, and, with the rest, " a last and most valued relic of better days," to a pawnbroker, he raised ten shillings. Laid out four of them on a pack to be carried by his wife for they were now to become travelling merchants in their very small way. Four shillings worth of capital in goods with other four shillings, likewise, invested in second hand books, for merchandise, and two left for current ex penses ! This was his equipment, out of the profits of which, six mouths were to be fed and six bodies kept warm. God help him ! Was ever a poor man, with a feeling heart throb bing in his bosom, and who bore that priceless gift of genius in his soul, with all its sensibility, its power of realizing earth, and its aspiration towards Heaven ever set at such odds 224: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. with fortune ? How he sped, you shall hear in his own touch ing words. " On Thursday morning we forsook our melancholy habita tion. On the third day, Saturday, we passed through the vil lage of Inchture, in the Carse of Gowrie, and proceeded to wards Kinnaird. Sunset was followed by cold, sour east winds and rain. The children becoming weary and fretful, we made frequent inquiries of other forlorn-looking beings whom we met, to ascertain which farm-town in the vicinity was most like ly to afford us quarters. Jean was sorely exhausted, bearing an infant constantly at her breast, and often carrying the young est boy also, who had fairly broken down in the course of the day. It was nine o clock when we approached the large and comfortable-looking steading of Balguay, standing about a quarter of a mile off the road. Leaving my poor flock on the way-side, I pushed down to the farm-house with considerable confidence, for I had been informed that Balguay was a hu mane man who never turned the wanderer from his door. Un fortunately for us, the worthy fanner was from home, and not expected to return that night. His housekeeper had admitted several poor people already, and could admit no more. I pleaded with her the infancy of my family, the lateness of the night, and their utter unfitness to proceed that we sought noth ing but shelter that the meanest shed would be a blessing. Heaven s mercy was never more earnestly pleaded for than was a night s lodging by me, on that occasion ; but No was the unvarying answer to all my entreaties. " I returned to my family : they had crept closer together, and all except the mother were fast asleep. Oh, Willie, Willie ! what keepit ye ? inquired the trembling woman. I m doubtfu o Jeanie ; she added, isna she waesome like ? Let s in frae the cauld. " * We ve nae way to gang, lass, said I, whate er come o us. Yon folk winna hae us/ " Few more words passed. I drew her mantle over the wet and chilled sleepers, and sat down beside them. My head throbbed with pain, and, for a time, became the tenement of thoughts I would not now reveal. They partook less of sor row than indignation, and it seemed to me that this same world was a thing very much to be hated ; an d, on the whole, the sooner that one like me could get out of it the better, for its sake and my own." I will not follow him in these reflections. They were the WILLIAM THOM. 225 natural outbreak of a heart driven to despair, disarmed of its faith, and sinking into the weakness of impiety. Let us spare him the censure of an uncharitable comment, and learn from his double affliction his misery and his bereft manhood more fervently to pray that it may not be our lot to be led into such temptation. In a better day, remembering this awful night, he made a reflection upon it which I take pleasure in noticing, both for its charity and its wisdom. " Here let me speak out," he says, " and be heard too while I tell it that the world does not, at all times, ^:now how unsafely it sits, when Despair has loosed Honer s last hold upon the heart when transcendant wretch edness lays weeping reason in the dust when every unsympa- thizing onlooker is deemed an enemy who then can limit the consequences ? For my own part, I confess that, ever since that dreadful night, I can never hear of an extraordinary criminal, without the wish to pierce through the mere judicial view of his career, under which I am persuaded there would often be found to exist an unseen impulse a chain with one end fixed in Nature s holiest ground, that drew him on to his destiny." I continue his narrative : " The gloamin light was scarcely sufficient to allow me to write a note, which I carried to a stately mansion hard by. It was to entreat what we had been denied at Balguay. This ap plication was also fruitless. The servant had been ordered to take in no such notes, and he could not break through the rule. On rejoining my little group, my heart lightened at the pres ence of a serving-man, who at that moment came near, and who, observing our wretchedness, could not pass without en deavoring to succor us. The kind words of this worthy peas ant sank deep into our hearts. I do not know his name, but never can I forget him. Assisted by him, we arrived, about eleven o clock, at the farm-house of John Cooper, West-town of Kinnaird, where we were immediately admitted. The accom modations, we were told, was poor ; but what an alternative from the storm-beaten way-side ! The servants were not yet in bed, and we were permitted, for a short time, to warm our selves at the bothy fire. During this interval the infant seemed to revive : it fastened heartily to the breast, and soon fell asleep. 226 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. We were next led to an outhouse. A man stood by with a lan tern, while, with straw and blankets, we made a pretty fair bed. In less than half an hour, the whole slept sweetly in their dark and almost roofless dormitory. " I think it must have been between three and four o clock when Jean wakened me. Oh, that scream ! I think I hear it now. The other children, startled from sleep, joined in fright ful wail over their dead sister. Our poor Jeanie had, unobserved by us, sunk during the night under the effects of the ex posure of the preceding evening, following, as it did, a long course of hardships too great to be borne by a young frame." " After a while I proceeded to awaken the people in the house, who at once entered into our feelings, and did every thing which Christian kindness could dictate as proper to be done on the occasion. A numerous and respectable party of neighbors assembled that day to assist at the funeral. In an obscure corner of Kinnaird Kirk-yard lies our favorite, lit tle Jeanie." This is one passage in the life of a man enured to the hard ships of a lot which we can scarcely comprehend to be real. It seems like a high-wrought and ingenious fiction devised to move the heart by its complicated and touching sadness. Yet there are thousands in the same condition, walking in the same round of privation, stung by the same griefs, overborne by the same desolation but they are silent for want of faculty of utterance, and their misery has sunk to the bottom of the ocean of life unchronicled This man had a voice to be heard by his fellow-men, and he has recorded his woes in words that have already reached the hearts of his countrymen, and have even travelled over these three thousand miles of sea to bring his story to us. Happy would it be for that ill-fated portion of mankind who are doomed to these penalties of poverty, if they could speak in such eloquent sorrow as this narrative of the hand-loom weaver of Aberdeen ! In every honest breast they would find a friend ; at every Christian hearth a sanctuary. But the cause of the poor man needs a generous pleader ; not only for that poverty cannot always tell its own tale, but be cause, also, it can offer no fee but the pleasure of doing a good action. WILLIAM THOM. 22 1 For many weeks this wretched family pursued their wan derings through a populous portion of Scotland, gathering such scant subsistence as the road side afforded. In the little town of Methven they betook themselves to the most humble of all public lodgings, to pass the night. Fivepence-halfpenny was the entire amount of their purse. The landlady gave them to understand that the night s entertainment would amount to sixpence this for the whole company a father, mother and three children ! She said too, in a spirit of worldly-wise thrift, that the money must be paid before they " took aff their shoon." There was a half-penny deficient, and the sum was entirely too large to be remitted by the generosity of the landlady. This small fact seems to have given a new turn to his destiny. He had a flute upon which he played sometimes, and could bring out tolerable melody. He was now, therefore, to turn minstrel a troubadour in the War against Want ; not so flaunting and dainty perhaps, as the minions we read of in the suite of a Cru sader, but quite as earnest in his vocation. He waited for the twilight ; for his pride, humbled as it had been, could not face the sun in this new profession. He was a workingman and ac customed to work for his bread. This looked like playing the beggar " the gaberlunzie man," as they called it. But tak ing heart of grace, he went to it manfully at last ; and driv ing his musical trade for a few hours, it brought him wealth that Pagianini might have envied, in five shillings of ready money. " My little girl," he remarks with some glee, in telling what use he made of his gains, " got a beautiful shawl and some articles of wearing apparel out of these five shillings !" This troubadour essay was so successful that he felt in clined to improve upon it. Fortune was now beginning to smile. He had seen the worst. He was an artist and could discourse eloquent music upon his flute ; he was a poet and could make verses. His gude woman and bairnies three were at his side. Whatever reluctance he might have felt towards this vagrant trade, in their affection and dependance he saw motive to defy all censure. He wrote his apology in some 228 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. lines addressed to his flute, which he caused to be printed on fine white paper, and these he himself delivered at the door of wealthy houses, in the hope that they might be read in the drawing-room. These lines very prettily allude to better days, when his music had cheered the home of his wife and children, and feelingly refer to his present purpose. This is an extract from them : " But now, wi hardship worn and stung I ll roam the warld about: For her and for our friendless young, Come forth, my faithful flute ! Your artless notes may win the ear That wadna hear me speak ; And for your sake that pity spare My full heart could na seek. And when the Winter s cranreuch bleak Drives houseless bodies in We ll ablins get the ingle-cheek A for your lichtsome din." " With a few copies of my poem," he says, " I set out once more upon my travels : and, to do justice to the scheme, it was, on several occasions, successful to the extent anticipated. In one laird s house I received the guerdon of half a guinea but, after all, it was but beggar s work, and my soul in time grew sick of it. It was with no sighing after flesh-pots that, in a few weeks, on times becoming a little better, I settled down once more to my loom." He had now gone to take up his residence in the village of Inverury, in the same county of Aberdeen. The world began to look somewhat kindlier upon him. He got work and better wages though not much. Little changes in com fort became great matters to him. A spirit bruised by such bufferings, as we have been contemplating, grows cherry on small accessions of good fortune. Thorn was just beginning to be somewhat hopeful of the future when a new calamity one deeper than all the rest struck him. " Nine months after our settlement here, she died Jean the mother of my WILLIAM THOM. 229 family, partner of my wanderings, the unmurmuring sharer in all my difficulties, left us left us, too, just as the last cold cloud was passing, ere the outbreak of a brighter day." That he loved the gentle spirit of whom he was thus bereft, you have seen in all that I have told of his life. If it had pleased Heaven to spare her the afflictions of that dreary ramble which has given such pathetic interest to his recol lections, by calling her away before she had tasted that bitter cup, he would perhaps have found motive for thankfulness in her escape, and in that memory have assuaged his grief. But she had felt the worst of the storm, and a clearer sky seemed opening before her. The father was left alone with three children, and with all the fresh memories of her constant affection and unalterable faith, her sufferings and her unre- pining patience : his mind gifted with the exquisite sensibilities of a true poetical temperament, his heart tuned to the ten- derest impression of those sad experiences which supply the fountain of human sorrows how must such a nature have felt this bereavement ! His customary work was at this time carried on at a village nine miles from Inverury. Once a fortnight only, could he enjoy his own fireside. His daughter, about ten years of age, was at country service : his two boys staid at home with their mother. Her illness induced him, for a few days, to forego his work. He was thus brought to her bedside in her last moments. She died. On returning from the church-yard he closed the door of his desolate home left it forever. Taking the eldest of his two boys with him, he found lodgings in a common little tavern, or tramp-house, as it was called, in the village. The youngest boy was committed to the charge of a neighbor ; but the little fellow slipped away in the night, and was found fast asleep at the door of their late home now a deserted, tenantless cottage. " Next morning, having secured a boarding-house for him (the youngest)," these are his own words " I took the road to resume labor at the usual place poor soft-hearted Willie by my side a trifle of sad 230 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. thinking within, and the dowie mists of Benachie, right before me. We travelled off our road, some miles, to the glen, where Betsey (his daughter) was herdin. Poor Bet knew nothing of what had happened at Inverury. Her mother had visited her three weeks before had promised to return with some wearables for winter was setting in fast and bitterly. The day and very hour we approached her bleak residence, that was their trysted time. She saw us as we stood on the knowe hesitating." The father was afraid to speak to his child. He had not the heart to tell her the melancholy tale he brought. That task he left to his son Willie. How he tutored the boy to this mournful mission you will learn in his own verse Your lanesome sister little kens Sic tidings we liae to gie, Willie ********* Kiss ye the tear frae her whitening cheek And speak awhile for me, Willie. Look kindly, kindly when ye meet, But speak not of the dead, Willie ; And when your heart would gar you greet Aye turn away your head, Willie. That waesome look, you look to me, Would gar her young heart bleed, Willie. Whene er she names a mither s name, And sairly presseth. thee, Willie ; Oh ! tell her of a happy hame Far, far o er earth and sea, Willie ; And one that waits to welcome them, Her nameless bairns and me, Willie. Never was honest, homely feeling breathed in lines of sweeter sadness than these. They are but fragments of a little poem of equal tenderness throughout. I am sure you will excuse me, being thus brought to notice the bereavement the poet sustained at this period, if I invite your attention to one more effusion of his melancholy muse, WILLIAM THOM. 231 softened into song by the memory of this gentle-hearted and patient being, who in the dreariest hour of his existence im parted to it its only warmth. The lines I am about to read were written, not in the first moments of his grief for the feel ings of such moments never fall into verse but written not long after. It is his own beautiful remark " When the bewilder ing gush has passed away, and a kind of gray light has set tled on the ruin, one may then number the drops as they fall- but the cisterns of sorrow echo not when full." These verses have the mellowest radiance of that gray light, and, I doubt not you will agree with me in saying also, the most musical cho of a cistern not full, but very far from being empty. I saw my true love first, on the banks of queenly Tay ; Nor did I deem it yielding my trembling heart away. I feasted on her deep dark eye, and loved it more and more, For oh! I thought I ne er had seen a look so kind before. I heard my true love sing, and she taught me many a strain ; But a voice so sweet, oh ! never shall my cold ear hear again. In all our friendless wanderings, in homeless penury, Her gentle song and jetty eye were all unchanged to me. I saw my true love fade I heard her latest sigh I wept no frivolous weeping when I closed her lightless eye: Far from her native Tay she sleeps, and other waters lave The markless spot where Ury creeps around my Jeanie s grave. Move noiseless, gentle Ury ! around my Jeanie s bed, And I ll love thee, gentle Ury ! where er my footsteps tread ; For sooner shall thy fairy wave return from yonder sea, Than I forget yon lowly grave, and all it hides from me. The darkest hour is that which comes before the day. He again fell into extreme poverty. His wife was gone ; and now, work again became difficult to be had. He had been for some weeks unemployed. In weariness, gloom and want, with the " dreary outlook" o? cold winter weather, finding nothing to which he could turn his hand in the hope of making a penny in this plight he sat down to compose verses. Dreary enough you will say they were melancholy and full 232 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of the dejection of his heart. It is a strange anomaly in the texture of this same heart of ours that, in such a moment, it should stimulate the fancy to an excursion into the regions of humor and laughter. But so it was. Not dreamy and sad, but in the highest degree mirthful, were the verses that flowed from his pen. There never was a man who, as poet, essayist or orator had free command of the pathetic, who had not also as free a command of the humorous. The history of litera ture is full of proofs of this association of faculty from Burns, through all the ranks of gifted men, to Dickens. The same heart that could pour out the exquisite pathos of High land Mary, could revel with no less intense a pleasure in the fun and frolic of Tarn O Shanter. The same power which was able to make men weep over the touching story of little Nell, has shaken the sides of half of Christendom with the irresistible comedy of Pickwick and Sam Weller. Let any one take up the Poor Scholar of Carleton, and he will be either more or less than human if he does not weep and laugh from beginning to end of that extraordinary tale. How often, too, when we have searched out the private history of the writer, we have found that the gayest and most irresistible of his sallies have been thrown off in the depths of his greatest calamity houseless, homeless, breadless, executing a task which would seem to have taken all its inspiration from the primrose path of dalliance. In such a time and mood as I have described, Thorn wrote for the newspapers some little poems which he called " The Blind Boy s Pranks." If I could read with proper effect the broad Scotch in which they are written, I would endeavor to give you some taste of his quality in this line ; but I cannot, and must leave you to consult the poems for yourselves. They abound with the lightest and pleasantest humor. Several of the poems in this collection are of this character. Let us turn to the author. We have seen him bereft of his wife, deserting his home, upon which he had not the heart again to look ; his daughter away from him in the most hum- WILLIAM THOM. 233 ble service ; his loom silent from want of work, and bitter winter locking up the poor man s meagre comforts and giving him instead hunger, cold and raggedness. At such a time his fancy is turned loose to follow " The Blind Boy s Pranks," and to tell " How they love and laugh in the North Countrie." Think of this, and then take his own account of the extrem ity at which he had arrived : " On a cold, cold winter day of February we sat alone my little ones and I, looking on the last meal procurable by hon orable means. My purpose was settled our wearables, such as they were, lay packed up for the journey Aberdeen and the House of Refuge our next home. I felt resigned. True,* we might have breathed on a little while longer, had I been able to worm through all the creeping intricacies that lie between starvation and parish charities." And so, the last meal was exhausted. And the author of these beautiful lines which I have read to you, and the sub ject of this eventful, unhappy story, has now packed up his wearables and is ready to seek shelter in the Poor House ! The darkest hour, I have said, is just before the dawn. On the forenoon of that very day, there came a letter to him from the office of the Aberdeen Journal. * * * A few days after wards there appeared in the Journal itself this paragraph which will explain the purport of the letter : " The beautiful verses entitled The Blind Boy s Pranks, which appeared in our paper of the 2oth of January are, we doubt not, fresh in the memory of our readers. It will delight them to learn that the humble yet gifted author has not passed unnoticed or unrewarded. We have had the pleasure of con veying to him, from a gentleman of this county, a very sub stantial token of his admiration." Following that, I find a letter dated yth February, 1841, addressed to the editor of this Aberdeen Journal. It is writ ten by the author of " The Blind Boy s Pranks" and written while " his wearables" were yet lying on the floor packed up 234- OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. for his journey to Aberdeen and the House of Refuge. The pith of it is contained in these words : " I have this hour re ceived your kind letter enclosing another with five pounds, from Knokespock." The letter is full of gratitude, surprise and modesty, and ends with a sentiment worth repeating "Oh, sir, it is difficult for those in other circumstances to think what a strife is his, who has to battle lip-deep in pov erty, with a motherless family and a poetical temperament ! The last item the worst inasmuch as it enhances tenfold the pain that is frequent , and the joy that is rare" From this moment penury seems to h^ve fled from his hab itation. William Thorn became an acknowledged, and a some what caressed author. Before spring was fairly green, he and little Betsey as he writes himself " were dashing along in a handsome carriage through the streets of London." * * * " Under the roof of my kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon," he tells us, " I remained upwards of four months. * * * j was introduced to many of the master minds in your great city. In the studio of Sir Francis Chantrey I conversed with the la mented Allen Cunningham. I have listened to the eloquence, and heard the nonsense of those who give laws to the people. I saw Majesty and Misery, and many paths between. Many a pleasure was put within my power ; and many are the delights of happy England, and kind the hearts therein : yet I longed for Scotland and am again upon my heather and at my loom. Alas, for the loom, though ! Hitherto it has been the ship on which I voyaged o er life. Happiness and Hardship alternate steersmen the Lyre and a light Heart my fellow-passengers. Now, amid the giant waves of monopoly, the solitary loom is fast sinking. Thus must the lyre, like a hen-coop, be thrown on the wrecking waters, to float its owner ashore." Whenever he shall again trust himself to that resource he will find many to wish him a prosperous tide to waft him into a near and hap py haven. William Thorn, we may suppose, is now at his loom, a wiser and better man for his trials. If he still works at his WILLIAM THOM. 235 mechanical trade for a livelihood, he is more happy and confi dent from the certainty he has now acquired, that his muse is a good and fast friend, who, having lifted him up in his great est need, is now still better able to bring him comfort, consid eration and fame. He has another and still higher gratifica tion : having experienced the extremes of this world s disfavor as a poor working-man with an eye to see and a heart to feel the social evils which have brought wretchedness upon his class, he has also the genius to vindicate their claim to the con sideration and the justice of mankind. That his thoughts are directed to this duty, we have abundant evidence in these pub lished poems ; and I cannot more appropriately take leave of him in this lecture, than by reading to you one of the best and most characteristic of these compositions ; one, in which you will see how assiduous he is, even on the most joyous occasion, to remind his countrymen of the misery that invokes their care. In 1843, the Queen visited Scotland. This event made a national holiday and all hearts beat high with pleasure to give her welcome to that portion of her dominions that is, all hearts whom distress and misery had not crushed too low to feel pleasure in any thing. Pageants, processions, music and all manner of festive preparations everywhere greeted her as she came. Her great Chieftains " highland and lowland, far and near" were assembled around her. The verses I read, are entitled A CHIEFTAIN UNKNOWN TO THE QUEEN. Auld Scotland cried, " Welcome your Queen !" Ilk glen echoed, " Welcome your Queen !" While turret and tower, to mountain and moor, Cried, " Wauken and Welcome our Queen !" Syne oil ! sic deray was exprest As Scotland, for long, had na seen ; When bodies cam bickerin a clad in their best To beck to their bonnio young queen. 236 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. When a kinds of colors came South, And scarlet frae sly Aberdeen ; Ilk flutterin heart flitted up to the mouth, A pantin to peep at our queen. Then were Earls on that glittering strand Wi diamonded Dame, mony ane, And weel might it seem that the happiest land, Was trod by the happiest queen. Then many a Chieftain s heart Beat high, neath its proud tartan screen : But one sullen Chief stood afar and apart, Nor recked he the smile o a queen. " Wha s he winna blink on our queen Wi his haffets sae lyart and lean?" O ho ! it is Want, wi his gathering gaunt, And his millions of mourners unseen. Proud Scotland cried, " Hide them, oh, hide . And let them nae licht on her e en ; Wi their bairnies bare, it would sorrow her sair For a mither s heart moves in our queen. It is greatly to the honor of William Thorn, that the recent favor which has lifted him from destitution to comparative pros perity, has, in no wise, seduced his heart from the generous duty of pleading the cause of those who cannot plead for themselves that he has even grown more fervent in his cham pionship of his unhappy comrades, and employs the increasing influence of his talents, with increased zeal in their behalf. The voice of such a witness, uplifted in the high tribunals of the world s judgment, speaking with so much knowledge, and informed by a heart of so much sensibility, we cannot believe will fall like seed upon a barren ground but, that it will be heard along with that of Allan Ramsay, Burns, Cunningham, Hogg and good Sir Walter, and other testimonies not less per suasive, vindicating the claims of the peasantry of Scotland, to the sympathy and respect of those who hold their destiny in their hands. WILLIAM THOM. 237 His kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, of Knokespock, al ready mentioned, took a warm interest in his welfare. They supplied him with money, encouraged him to publish his book, and to bring him within the knowledge and patronage of that world, upon which he had never been permitted to look in vited him to London, where they received him and his daugh ter, as we have seen, under their own hospitable roof as favor ite guests. His volume is very appropriately inscribed to " The Lady of Knokespock," accompanied by a delicate com pliment which, I have no doubt, she well deserved. It is a poet s tribute to the loveliest attribute of woman, her gentle charity and considerate friendship for the poor and makes known in graceful verse, how much her goodness of heart had wor the affections of those among whom she spent a great portion of her time. It refers to her customary departure for England in the bleakest season of the year, and breathes a nat ural sigh that one so kind, should ever be absent from her peo- pie. Oh, would she dwell among us When dales are deep wi snaw, Dour winter could na wrong us Nor simmer seem awa. "Blessings on the good Lady of Knokespock ! These four lines will requite her if she sought other requital than her own feel ings for all the beneficence her fortune has enabled her to be stow upon the Poet of Inverury. A ministering angel to a gifted son of song, she has established a claim to the gratitude of the man who is able to tell to posterity, how richly her heart was imbued with the blandest and most generous of human virtues. It may gratify those who take an interest in our story, to learn that " handsome donations," from several of his country men at home, by others even in Calcutta, and, I rejoice to say, by some in New York, have recently enabled Thorn, not only to lay up some store of comfort for himself, but also to make a small provision for his children. By this timely contribution 238 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. to his stock of worldy gear, I would hope that his armory has been supplied with weapons, which shall enable him henceforth to drive away that grim enemy who had planted so heavy a foot upon his hearthstone, and whose buffets had so broken his spirit in that sad series of years I have brought to your notice. It is not my purpose, in closing this discourse, to make any disparaging comments upon the defects in that scheme of society which admits of such wretchedness as we have been contemplating. We may suppose this unhappy state of things to be owing, in part, to the necessary and inevitable malady of an overstocked and consequently an underpaid population ; in part to the frightful inequalities of wealth which the arrange ment of the social institution of Britain has engendered and perpetuated between the different ranks or classes of the na tion. An inquiry into this subject would suggest remarks which it might be deemed almost uncharitable in us to indulge at this day. The evils of government are the slow product of ages to which each generation contributes so little, and which each generation has so many motives to overlook, that, per haps, it would scarcely be fair to expect that any one should be willing to plunge into the revolution which alone can re move them. Besides, revolutions do not always produce the result which those look for who begin them. They not un- frequently end in worse calamities than those they seek to rem edy. But every right-hearted, feeling man must recognize the great fact, that the existence of such evils as I have referred to, demand the most assiduous care of those who rule the State, and that their duty to God and man will be inadequately and unfaithfully performed, as long as there is one oppression left which legislation or public or private effort is able to remove. No nation is sure of its peace while there live within its bor ders a people bowed to the earth by perpetual poverty. That very fact itself is a token of some deep-seated and fatal dis ease. The suffering masses, educated, however feebly, in the perception of the rudiments of freedom, may not be expected forever to meditate peacefully over wrongs which they may con WILLIAM THOM. 239 ceive to be remediable in their own rude way of remedy. They submit reverently and, with exemplary resignation, to the af flictions with which it may please Heaven to try them, but they submit neither with patience, nor without a deep silent resent ment, either to the oppression or the neglect of man. A wise and humane nation takes early warning from such discontent, and finds its safety in the faithful practice of Christian charity and duty. To slight these is to run the imminent hazard of that retribution which Providence permits to slumber in the arm of the wretched only until his instinct shall inform him of the right moment to strike. Then Low lies the proud ; And smitten by the weapons of the poor The blacksmith s hammer and the woodman s axe. His tale is told: and for that he was rich And robb d the poor and for that he was strong And scourged the weak and for that he made laws Which turn d the sweat of Labor s brow to blood, For these, his sins, the nation cast him out. Happily, we stand in no need of this admonition in our own land. Such calamity, as the story of William Thorn unfolds, is a stranger to our experience ; and, if we be wise, will con tinue so forever. That we have poor men within our borders, we count no dishonor ; that no man must necessarily continue poor we hold to be our especial boast. Wealth and poverty are accidents which belong equally to every class of our citi zens. They carry neither privilege nor disqualification. In dustry is every man s heritage if he chose to accept it j and in dustry is the invariable source of competence and respectabili ty. Wretchedness, too, we sometimes find associated with pov erty but no such wretchedness as we have been contempla ting so hopeless, so fatally excluded from the charities of life. Vice, intemperance and crime bring their penalties along with them, even where the most genial light of heaven fertilizes the most genial soil of earth ; yet the misery they bring knows no MO OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. such extremity here as to deprive the sufferer of bread and shelter. " Yon folk winna hae us" was never uttered by a houseless family beneath any hedge in America. Not a farm er s homestead in this broad land, not a hut nor cabin in- the wildest passes of our mountains, that would not at least have furnished the wanders food and shelter, rest and kind nursing. Poverty and distress have a sure and never-failing fund of relief in the common sympathy of our whole people. No man may carry his head so high as to look above the wants of his fellow- man craving sustenance ; none are crushed so low as to sink beneath that general and, I may say, constitutional charity which is the characteristic and the glory of our social frame work. To comfort the weak-hearted, to strengthen such as do stand, and to raise up them that fall, is no less one of the ends of our political structure, that it is among the best acknowledged practical duties of our domestic morals. No scorn of man, no judgment of Heaven is more earnestly invoked nor would more assuredly befall, than that which would strike him down who in public station or in private should seek to trample upon the weak and toiling poor. Labor, in the view of our policy is man s most honorable estate. Our laws foster its inter ests ; we erect the working-man into an independent and pow erful citizen, and we give the government into his hands, with a fixed conviction that in his prosperity abide the power, the happiness and the virtue of the nation. The great energy of Republicanism, we are persuaded, in connection with this fact, exists in universal instruction ; its most terrible enemy is ignor ance. To fortify the citadel of freedom, therefore, we look to our schools. They are, in fact, themselves the most formida ble forts which a free people can construct to repel the assail ants of liberty. The day-school and the night-school, the gram mar-school and the academy, the College and the University, are all so many bulwarks to guard the frontier of freedom from invasion. The humblest and most unpretending in this chain of national defences but often the most efficient of all, be cause it seeks its material in that lowly rank which others WILLIAM THOM. 241 overlook and not unfrequently there finds richest treasure, is the modest Sabbath-School, which comes as a gleaner in the field of life to gather the stray ears of human intelligence, and to nurse them for seed, from which to reap future harvest of strength, wisdom and virtue. Let us, then, honor, with full meed of praise, the lowly Sab bath-School and the pious charity of those who sustain it ! ii OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ADDEESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE MARYLAND INSTITUTE FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE FOURTH ANNUAL EXHIBITION, ON THE 21 ST OCTOBER, 1851. MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen of the Institute: Ladies and Gentlemen : This is an occasion which presents itself to our regard attended with many circumstances of congratulation. The founders of an Association which has been most hap pily conceived and prosperously brought into the full exertion of its practical usefulness, are here to witness the triumph of their labors. This large assemblage of citizens and their friends are gathered together to enjoy that triumph, and to do honor to the intelligence and perseverance which have wrought this beneficent result. A brilliant collection of the products of mechanical art, comprehending in their scope a great variety of the inventions, works and fabrics which minister to the wants of man, which multiply and cheapen his comforts, and which also embellish his life with the luxuries that render it elegant, refined and gentle, are here arranged in beautiful order. In looking upon these we naturally blend with our admiration, a strongly recog nized sentiment of pride, in the reflection that all this pano rama of rich and rare creations is the offspring of the genius and industry of our own country. Our applause is seasoned and refreshed by a wholesome patriotism. Last and not least felicitous in the circumstances that solicit our notice we are MARYLAND INSTITUTE. * 243 here to witness the Installation of the Institute in this grand and spacious Temple of Art, which has sprung into existence, one might say, almost in a night the matchless achievement of that magician power which resides in the wand of the Mechanics of Baltimore, whose enchantments are potent enough to convert the beautiful visions of the Architect into solid stone and perdurable brick and mortar, with a speed so swift and dexterous as to fling over the reality the illusion of a dream. These are the conditions of our meeting to-night. We are here to celebrate and distinguish the opening of the Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Maryland Institute for the promo tion of the Mechanic Arts the first in this Hall, which we hope is destined to become the theatre of a long and honora ble career of usefulness to the Society. The prominent object contemplated in the organization of this Institute ; the patronage which has been hitherto bestowed upon it by the authorities of the city, and which every citizen assures himself is to be extended to it in the future ; the pres ence of our chief functionaries among us at this moment, and the intimate relation which the whole scheme of the Institute has to the prosperity and future character of Baltimore, will excuse, if they do not even suggest the propriety of it, a short review of our past history, which, I am sure, will furnish a pleasant reminiscence to many who hear me, who, like myself, may look as a personal witness over a very respectable frag ment of a century, and especially if, like me, they may confess to the trick of indulging some quiet pride in the chronicles of this their birthplace. The rapid growth of Baltimore to its present eminence is a fact which is noted with no less complacency by our own in habitants, than with congratulation and surprise by the State of which it is the metropolitan ornament, and by the Union, of which it is becoming in many respects, both politically and commercially, as it is already geographically, an important centre. It is entitled to be regarded now as one of the chief 24:4 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. cities of this continent a powerful and enterprising commun ity surrounded by all the comforts which are necessary to make this, their home, a most pleasant abiding-place, by all the arts which make it rich, and by all the means of intellectual culti vation which ought to make it, and I trust does make it, virtu ous and wise. No town in the domain of " the old Thirteen" has grown with such speedy growth to that ripe power and usefulness which convert well-ordered cities into fortresses of national strength. No town, within that circle, has bound itself to the Union, in so short a space, by so many ties that we may claim to call pre-eminently and distinctively national. Its position is in the very heart of the confederacy. Its population is drawn, in almost equal amount, from the North, the South, the East and the West. It has always been inti mately connected with agriculture, as a principal mart of the two great staples of flour and tobacco. It has always been in the same degree a manufacturing town. And, in equal dis tribution with these, it has been from an early period the seat of an active commerce. It would be hard to say which of these three interests have preponderated in the composition of the city. Certainly, we may affirm, neither has held such predominance, as to show itself above the others either in the direction of our affairs or in the character of the community. It thus stands somewhat conspicuously in the Union, as the representative of the leading national interests, and may be said to be an epitome of the nation itself. This character is still further shown in the same equal division of religious de nominations presenting an equilibrium of opinion, in that par ticular, which may be reckoned as a type of our whole country. We live on the border which separates the slave-holding States from those which prohibit slavery, and our population is, per haps, the only one of the same size gathered within the con fines of a city, who have the opportunity and the temper to weigh the important questions to which this refers with a calm, practical and trustworthy judgment : in this, again, present- MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 245 ing a truly national aspect as an eminent and distinctive trait of our community. The whole history of Baltimore runs over a space of one hundred and twenty-two years. Just that time has elapsed since, in 1729, a few gentlemen who lived in this neighborhood, obtained an act of Assembly " for erecting a town on the north side of Patapsco in Baltimore County." You have heard the traditional story of Mr. John Moale s alarm when this project of a town was first talked of. The projectors had an eye to a tract of land of his Moale s Point which looks in upon Spring Gardens. That worthy gentleman had some iron ore on his farm, and was seized with such terror at the idea of having a town built over it, that he repaired, it is said, in ex traordinary haste, to the Legislature, of which he was a mem ber, to defeat the bill then actually under consideration, to place the town upon his land. A very notable effort of parlia mentary skill as it has turned out ! Baltimore was, in conse quence, saved from an inconvenient location on Moale s Point and established where it is. It was laid out with a space of sixty acres, lying pretty nearly within the interval now compre hended between Liberty and Gay Streets. Mr. William Fell, a ship carpenter, about the same time bought the farm including the present Fell s Point, and there built a dwelling-house and store. In the year 1732 he pro cured the privilege to lay out a town of ten acres on his farm, and commissioners were appointed to superintend it. It was called Jones s Town, and was subsequently, at different periods, enlarged until it reached the Falls. A town, also some years before these events, was laid out on Whetstone Point ; but this came to nothing. These are the beginnings of Baltimore. There was but little trade with this region in those days, but as it was not sufficiently inviting to pay the cost of the voyage from North Point, an occasional ship came only that far and anchored there, with a view to the trade up the bay as well as that of our river. Baltimore town, having now got a location, at least upon OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. paper, we may suppose went on to do her best in the way of seeking her fortune. Joppa and Elk Ridge Landing, in those days, were rival stars on that theatre upon which our adven turous little aspirant had now appeared as another competitor. It required a brave spirit in our forefathers to stand in the blaze of these luminaries ! How the matter fared we shall see in the progress of time. We have a record of some significance, touching the state of things in 1752 a lapse of twenty-three years reckoned from our A. U. C. There hangs upon the wall of the saloon of the Maryland Historical Society, a rude and very primitive drawing in ink, colored after a most juvenile fashion, purporting to be a true portraiture of Baltimore Town in the year I have mentioned 1752. It is said to be by Mr. John Moale, the father of one of our oldest and most esteemed families, and the son of that parlimentarian who was so successful in protecting his iron mines. He was then quite a youth, I should say, from the style of his work. The tradition which imputes this sketch to his pencil, I have no doubt is correct and also, as the same tradition goes, that it was made at that date. Rude and un- artistic as it is, it is a very interesting memorial. Some years ago it was engraved by the direction of Mr. Edward J. Coale, with some touches of improvement, both in the matter and manner of it, thrown in by Mr. Bowley. I prefer, however, the original with all its faults, because they obviously show that Mr. Moale was not an ambitious or an imaginative artist but deal severely with facts. Manifestly, every house is put down to the best of his knowledge and belief, as if he were upon oath. It is palpably a conscientious production, and I would be willing almost to certify that he counted every win dow, and drew it with a ruler upon the paper though in a shocking disregard, I must say, of the laws of perspective. The drawing, in fact, considered as a drawing, would provoke a laugh in your School of Design from the youngest apprentice. Still this picture of Baltimore Town, taken in 1752, is a most MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 247 veritable historical document, and is a relic to be guarded precious as the book of Sibyl. There we have Baltimore as it was one hundred years ago. Let us this evening celebrate a centennial anniversary. The drawing shows what twenty-three years could do for a town determined to go ahead in the last century. There are just twenty-five houses, all told rather more than a house a year increase. If we suppose that twenty of these were dwelling- houses, and compute ten inhabitants to each house, we shall have the census of Baltimore in 1752, showing two hundred inhabitants " if more, more, if less, less," as Euclid has it. Two hundred increase from zero, in twenty-three years ! These houses are scattered, with abundant space for elbow- room, over a hill-side which slopes towards the basin. The principal. locality which we recognize is Calvert Street, and there is a brick building laid down, which is ascertained to be the house that stood, until two years ago, at the corner of Calvert and Bank Streets, and was, at the date of the drawing, Payne s Tavern. There was a rival to this tavern, at the corner of Market and Calvert Streets, kept by Mr. Rogers. In Mr. Grif fith s chronicles of the city, to which I am indebted for these particulars, it is recorded that there were three other brick houses in the village, one of which stood, as well as I can de termine, on or near the lot at present occupied by Mr. Reverdy Johnson s mansion, opposite Barnum s, and was the dwelling- house of Mr. Edward Fotterall. It was two stories high, with free-stone corners, the first daring attempt at two stories in the town, and, as the historian tells us, the first that was built " without a hip roof." The bricks of all these four houses were imported from England for our worthy forefathers had not in that day, arrived at the stature of so high a fact as to believe that there was earth in Maryland which could be made into a brick, much less that they were daily walking over a soil which was destined to be fashioned into the material of a beautiful city, whose architectural renown should be in some degree connected with the unrivalled excellence of its brick. 24:8 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. On the right, or east of the village, Jones s Falls wound, by a much more circuitous line than it now does, around the northern and eastern base of the hill, and sank into the Pa- tapsco at a point where a broad and unseemly swamp, that covered many acres, encroached upon the foot of the hill, and opened a wide flat of stagnant pool and slimy marsh to the view of the good people in their dwellings. There, on that flat grew the bulrush and the water-lily there the wild fowl fed, and the ortolan and the rail flocked among the reeds ; and there exhaled, on autumn nights, the miasm that made the ancient mothers of our town fretful and objurgatory, when their lords, our ancient fathers, happened as they, doubtless, often did to stay out too late at that season. Mr. Bowley s improvement of the drawing is valuable for some authentic insight it gives us into the state of navigation at this epoch. The whole of our marine employed in the foreign trade is engraved in the picture. There lies the good brig " Philip and Charles," belonging to Mr. Rogers ; and there lies the trusty sloop " The Baltimore," belonging to Mr. Lux. This is the marine list of the port, comprehending all the shipping that ventured beyond the Capes of the Chesa peake. These are very descriptive statistics two hundred inhabitants, twenty-five houses four of them brick one of these two storied, without a hip roof, two taverns and then, for the navigation, one brig, one sloop. We have some other particulars to help along this view of Baltimore. Mr. James Gardner kept a school at the corner of the present South and Water Streets ; and, still, he was not sufficient for the literary need of the town, for I read, in an advertisement put in the Maryland Gazette, at Annapolis, that "a schoolmaster of sober character, who understands teaching English, writing and arithmetic, will meet with good encouragement from the inhabitants of Baltimore Town, if well recommended." Then there was a Market House set on foot about this time, and, not long afterwards, erected at the north-west cor- MARYLAND INSTITUTE. ner of Market and Gay Streets. It was constructed with a large room in a second story, where public assemblies, dances, jugglery now and then, and other matters of public concern were held or exhibited an early and dim type, perhaps, of greater market houses in after times. A Fire Department began to bud, also, at this epoch fore shadowing future renown in that way. Every house-keeper was obliged to keep a ladder to be used against fire, on a pen alty of ten shillings ; and he endured the like penalty if his chimney should become so wrong-headed as to " blaze out at top/ While inquiring into these matters, I must advert to another point of police upon which our ancestors seem to have had a strong prejudice one, however, which has worn away in the lapse of years, or gradually shrunk abashed before the march of intellect. I commend it very respectfully to our city authorities as a matter of antiquarian notice : It is recorded, in those early days, that our burghers were very positive and peremptory in their orders to prohibit swine from running at large. The descendants of that proscribed race of old inhabi tants are happier in their prerogatives just now. Let me, as a matter of historical interest, turn to another subject belonging to this era, before I leave it. Our annals, about this date, are embellished with an exploit of some unction, in an historical fact pleasantly demonstrative of the vivacity and of the picturesque imagination of the founders of our city. For what reason connected with our position in reference to foes either foreign or domestic, I have never been able to find out, but there was a vague and latent opinion in Baltimore for several years, that the inhabitants were danger ously exposed to the incursions of an enemy. We have on one occasion, at least just after Braddock s defeat the tra dition of a panic which drove the country people into the town, and the towns-people into the boats of the harbor suddenly and strangely apprehensive of mischief that never came. This peculiarity of opinion or temper, or whatever it might have been, suggested, at an early period, to the inhabi- n* 250 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. tants the policy of building a defensive fortification. Louis Philippe had the same apprehensions in regard to Paris, and, in unconscious imitation of our forefathers, adopted the same measure. So, our people went to work and raised a subscrip tion, and having provided the funds, straightway under the direction of what military engineer I know not for history has not preserved his name, built what, I suppose, was in tended to be considered and regarded as a rampart or wall of defence around the whole inland border of the town ; thus showing very clearly that the enemy against whom this provision was made, was not of the maritime or salt-water kind. In this formidable wall which, it is to be noted, was not pierced for cannon there were two great gates to admit the friendly traveller, or to be shut in the face of the unfriendly one. The first of these gates was at the west end of Market Street, and was placed somewhere very near to the present in tersection of McClellan s alley. The second gate opened into the upper part of North Gay Street- not far, I conjecture, from the stone tavern at the corner of Front Street. Between these two great portals, a smaller gate, for the use of foot- passengers, a postern, it may be called was cut through the wall, near the head of Charles Street that is to say, about the intersection of Saratoga. This impregnable line of fortification never had its virtue put to the trial by an attack from abroad ; but, like some of the most distinguished martyrs of history, it sank before privy sedition at home. It was not more than three or four years after its erection, when a severe winter came on, and the wall, by a great and, indeed, fatal mistake, being made of wood of a very combustible kind and not being put together with so much skill as the engineer ought to have employed in so weighty a matter, this whole bulwark was, by very secret and gradual assaults, pulled to pieces, and stolen away for " kind ling." A second winter finished it : and thus it fell a sacrifice to the rigors of the climate, and the fire-side comforts of the inhabitants. The wall of Severus has left some traces in MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 251 Britain to gladden the eye of the antiquarian ; but our Dous- tersvvivels search in vain for the vestige of a decayed post or rusty nail belonging to this ancient fortification of the only " walled town" in the United States. These are the principal incidents I think worthy of notice in the Baltimore of 1752. It truth, there seems to have been but few prognostics given at that time of the destiny of the city. It is curious to recur to this history as connected with the solution of the question What is the cause of the growth of towns ? There has always been an inclination to indulge in very emphatic predictions in such matters. Every one specu lates at the present day, upon the absolute certainty of a pros perous town growing up on some locality he could designate. There is no point, however, upon which anticipation is so often disappointed as this. The chances are all against the precon ceived opinion. Looking to the ordinary considerations which we might conjecture to be most potential in influencing the growth of a trading city, one would say, a priori, that the mouth of the Susquehanna river would have been selected in the last century, as the site of a town inevitably destined to grow to im portance. Another such site would have been pointed out, perhaps, at Norfolk, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the ocean. Annapolis and Alexandria and Georgetown were, in those days, full of hope. They were growing, and for some years continued to grow, in advance of Baltimore Alexandria especially. But Baltimore gave no augury for a favorable pre diction. What was here to invite settlement what conve nience of inland trade what seaward ? To this day, we may consider the sudden start and swift pre-eminence which Balti more made and won as an unsolved problem in the philosophy of cities. Between the year 1752 and the close of the century, the an nals of Baltimore are busy with thickly multiplying incidents. The first half of this period is ante-Revolutionary. The second half finds the town grown into a city. Early in the first term, we have evidences of a sudden impulse given to our pop- 252 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. illation. Traders begin to settle here. We do a good business in tobacco, which rather throws Elk Ridge Landing into the shade. Our ships multiply : " the Philip and Charles" has competitors. Some good houses are built showing a taste for luxury. Conspicuous among these and forming quite an era in our history, is the Mount Clare House, erected in 1754 by Charles Carroll then usually called Barrister Carroll. The bricks were imported for this mansion the record some what carefully informs us as they had been, before that, for other houses. This fact stands in very striking contrast with the brick-yards which now engross the once beautiful grounds of Mount Clare. This old mansion, which yet survives, is a graphic monument of the past time. Its aspect is solemn, and scrupulously aristocratic and magnificent too, in view of the means of that day. One may fancy the Tully Veolan of Wa- verley in its amplitude and grave dignity of exterior, with the old lions carved in stone that stood rampant on the pillars of the gateway, reminding us of the Baron of Bradwardine s fa vorite bears. It is but a few years since these disappeared. And there was a fine terrace overlooking the town. I picture to myself the Barrister there, not unlike the old Baron, as I gather, in many points of character walking to and fro upon this terrace, with his arms behind him, in meditation " Stately stept he east awa% And stately stept he west/ Dr. Stevenson, also, now built his house upon the hill near the York Road which is still to be seen there. This house, on account of its elegance, was called by envious townsmen of that time, " Stevenson s Folly." It was not too elegant nor too costly, however, to be converted by him into a small-pox hospital, supported at his own expense, when the town stood in need of it. A noble act, worthy of honorable commemora tion now, of a man whose genius was equal to his generosity. The taverns are multiplied to meet these new demands of business. We can by this time recount some five or six no MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 253 bad index to the increase both of the number and jovial habits of the inhabitants. In the year 1756-7 there is an influx of inhabitants sent hither by an event which belongs to a most melancholy page of history the expulsion of the Acadian French from Nova Scotia, upon the conquest of that province by the British. You may find their story sung in the unaccustomed, but sweet and plaintive strain of Longfellow s Evangeline. There is nothing in human chronicle more tender or more touching than the fate of that little colony, of which a fragment, like frightened birds driven by storm, lit down, wearied and bruised at our hearth stones. A nation of simple, virtuous peasants are driven from the homes consecrated to them by the affections of more than a century, and are thrust almost penniless upon the world. " Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed. Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the North-east Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the banks of New foundland. Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city : From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern Savannas." Not friendless, homeless nor hopeless, however, were they in Baltimore. Those who came here were received with a ready and generous hospitality. They were at first lodged in private houses, and in that building of Mr. FotteralPs with the "free-stone corners" to which I have alluded which was now empty. Here they had quarters, and established their little chapel. And it was not long before these frugal and in dustrious exiles were able to construct some small but comfort able houses upon South Charles Street, giving to that quarter its designation of French Town, which it preserved within the memory of my boyhood. The names of Guttro, Blanc, Gould and others, are still remembered in the descendants of that em igration. Some years afterwards, a catastrophe, of a much more revolting nature, brought a number of kindred exiles from 254 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Saint Domingo, who, by a natural affinity, planted themselves in the same district and enlarged the limit of this old French Town. I have said that Baltimore had already begun to throw Elk Ridge Landing into shade. And now another triumph awaited her. The days of that other rival, the more doughty of the two the days of Joppa began to be numbered : Joppa, for nearly fifty years the seat of Justice for Baltimore County, which then, and for some time afterwards, included the present Harford within its limits. Baltimore Town becoming the cus tomary and favorite place of business, the people grumbled at being obliged to go to Joppa for their law. There was a strug gle, of course j but it ended in transferring the County records to Baltimore, and the first opening of the Court was held, until better accommodation could be provided, in the great room over the Market- House. Thenceforth the glory of Joppa de parted with the magisterial bench, and the town has become but a memory. This event bears date 1768. The triumph of our city is illustrated by a coincident fact of some distinction. " The Me chanical Fire Company," the first company formed in this city, the leader in a long line of kindred associations which, from that day to this, have devoted themselves to a truly benevolent object, with a gallantry amounting to heroism and a disinter estedness which can be only found in the highest philanthro py. An engine was purchased, I conjecture in Philadelphia ; and, in order to be particular in so weighty a matter, I am enabled to say that it cost ninety-nine pounds, Maryland cur rency. In the due course of development we get a Poor House and Work House, thus affording, as the world goes, in the appari tion of beggary and crime, indisputable signs of an increasing civilization. Our public Bridges, at this period, begin to grow ostenta tious. The towns-people are wont to brag of them. We have several across the Falls the chief one, as now, at the foot of MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 255 Market Street to reach which, in that day, as the marsh was undrained and deep, a causeway was built from Harrison Street to the Bridge. In 1773, we get our first newspaper, through the enterprise of Mr. Goddard, who then established The Maryland Jour nal and Baltimore Advertiser. But I fear we are not yet very much of a reading community, for I find, what I am ashamed to see, that Mr. Joseph Rathel, utterly failed in his attempt to get up a Circulating Library. Ten years afterwards Mr. Wil liam Murphy was more fortunate. It is another evidence of progress up to this date, that a theatre for dramatic exhibitions was now established in Balti more. Messrs. Douglass and Hallam having made the experi ment of the public support, first in a warehouse at the corner of Market and Frederick Streets, found sufficient encourage ment to build a play-house on Albemarle Street From that time down to the present, through many fluctuations in the pub lic patronage, this city has been constantly supplied with one or more theatres, in reference to which it may be said, that the Baltimore Stage in its earlier day was sustained by an amount of talent, and managed with a propriety very much be yond that which it exhibits to the later generation. We have lost in the multiplication of theatrical companies much of the high er qualities that gave excellence to the more limited number, and which, of old, commended them to the merited favor of a refined population. In the growth of Baltimore between 1752 and the date of the Revolution, we may observe that quite a decided tendency was manifested in favor of settlements east of Jones s Falls. There are parts of Old Town and Fell s Point, which, to the present day, retain the outward character of the oldest portions of the city. The streets there indicate by their names the colonial era to which they belong. York and Lancaster, Exeter, and Albemarle, Queen and Granby, tell their own history. The growth on the west of the Falls, though of a later period, was much more rapid. At the date of the Revolution, Market 256 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Street offered to view a respectable thoroughfare, along which a double line of houses straggled as far as Liberty Street, where Mr. Jacob Fite had built a house sufficiently large to accommodate the Continental Congress which held its session there in December, 1776. This building, still known as Con gress Hall, is yet a conspicuous survivor of many contempora ries which have long since sunk before the march of modern improvement. The streets, after this period, equally indicate their era. We have, in contrast to those I have before men tioned, the names of Conway and Bam , Fayette and Greene, Lexington and Eutaw, fragrant with the recollections of the Revolution. A census of Baltimore, taken in the year 1775, shows the whole population to be five thousand nine hundred and thirty-four persons, and the number of houses to be five hundred and sixty-four. In the War of the Revolution, Baltimore rendered good service. No population of the same extent, throughout the colonies, contributed more nobly to that quarrel than our little town. We had men of mould in those days who have left the memory of a manhood behind them, which is proudly perpet uated in the annals of the nation. You will allow me to des ignate, at the head of these, one whose name is most familiar to your ears John Eager Howard the young soldier who woke up the first echoes of these hills with the bugle-note that summoned men to the strife, and who, afterwards, at the Cowpens, at Eutaw and on other fields, raised a shout of vic tory which reverberated with still louder echoes over the Thir teen Colonies which these triumphs were converting into inde pendent States ; he who lived to hang up his trusty sword within the walls of that beautiful Belvidere which sheltered him through a long life of civic usefulness blessed with the choicest gifts of fortune still more blest in the gratitude of his country and in the affections of the community around him. The compatriots of Howard who went from Baltimore Town and County, were Dr. James McHenry, the friend and MAKYLAND INSTITUTE. 257 Secretary of Washington, and afterwards a member of his Cab inet General Samuel Smith, renowned for his gallant defence of the fort at the mouth of the Schuylkill still more renowned for long and faithful service as the representative of this city and of the State in the National Congress ; Colonel Nicholas Rogers, the aid-de-camp of De Kalb ; Colonel Mordecai Gist, Captains Oldham and Dorsey, Lieutenants Plunkett and Phil- pot, all of the " Maryland Line" so famous in the history of the war ; Captain Nicholas Ruxton Moore, of the volunteer service, and Commodores Nicholson and Barney, distinguished in the first exploits of the infant navy of our Union. Many other offi cers, at the close of the war, took up their abode in the town and made it their permanent home men not less honored in the annals of our country than those I have mentioned. Among these you may recognize old friends and valued citizens in the names of General Otho Williams, General Swan, Colonel Ram sey, Colonel Bankson, Paul Bentalou, one of Pulaski s most valiant captains, Strieker, McCulloh, Sterret, McDonald, Clemm, Eichelberger time would fail me if I were to attempt to fill up this catalogue, and to give you even the briefest out line of that service in which they won an imperishable title to the gratitude of the nation. But I must not omit, and especially in this presence, to re call the devotion of the ladies of Baltimore in the glorious cause of our nation s struggle for independence. They not only made contributions in money to the supply of the war, but, with still more generous zeal, dedicated their personal la bor, at a crisis of great interest, to the welcome duty of fur nishing Lafayette s little army with clothing the work of their own hands ad putting those brave men in condition for that signal consummation of the war, the capture of Cornwallis, to which they were then hastening all the more effective for this encouragement and support from the warm hearts and fair hands of our townswomen. The oak still stands upon the lawn at Mount Clare under whose shade the chivalrous French man and his companions received the hospitalities of the fam- 258 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ily on that occasion ; and the hall there still exists in which Rochambeau and the officers of the Duke de Lauzun s legion danced with the beautiful women who, even in that early time, gave to our town a popular and distinctive reputation, which the city still retains in their descendants. Let us not forget now, in the presence of the daughters, the perennial honors due to the worthy mothers of our city ! The peace of 1783 found Baltimore a town which, as such things were reckoned in that day, might be called one of com manding consideration. The limits of the town had been fre quently extended to embrace contiguous tracts, and all that portion east of the Falls had already been united with it. The population had come to eight thousand. Trade was increased in larger proportion. The authorities had begun to pave the streets : stage coaches were established in regular lines to Philadelphia and to Alexandria ; and a second newspaper, The Maryland Gazette, was set up. In short, Baltimore began to assume the air and interest of a city. We had a very notable architectural feat performed at this time, which I commend to the notice of our Institute, not only for its illustration of the mechanical enterprise and genius of one of our early and distinguished workmen, but also because in its day it excited great admiration, not unseasoned with wonder at its success. Mr. Leonard Harbaugh, a very worthy and ingenious mechanic, undertook, in compliance with the wish of the Town Council, to remove twenty feet of earth from below the foundation of the Court-House, and to insert an arch under the building. The Court-House stood on a bluff overhanging the Falls, precisely where the Baltimore Monu ment now stands. It was two stories high and-built of brick. In the grading of Calvert Street this bluff was to be cut away but it was very much desired to save the Court-House. Mr. Harbaugh pondered over the matter and finally persuaded himself, and afterwards the Town Council, that he could pre serve the favorite building by leaving it twenty feet in the air, after all the subjacent earth was taken away. Our towns-peo- MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 259 pie thought this an incredible exploit the dream of a bold projector but Mr. Harbaugh knew what he was about, and successfully accomplished, in the face of that incredulous world which dwelt upon the banks of Patapsco, this daring achievement. Many now remember the Old Court-House with its magnificent arch below, that gave it something of the air of a house perched upon a stool. They remember, too, the whipping-post, pillory and stocks which stood in front of the arch, with a most malignant aspect of admonition address ed to the loafers, rowdies and petty larceny dilettanti of that day. There was another step in the progress of improvement belonging to this era, which, on this spot and at this time, I have a special reason for bringing to your view. The town was suddenly aroused to a consideration of the Market-House. There was quite a passion on this question, amounting almost to a popular commotion. The old building at the corner of Market and Gay Streets had become utterly insufficient, and it was clear that something needed to be done in the way of a new one. Where that was to be placed was the exciting ques tion. There were three interests set into a blaze with it : an up-town, a down-town, and a Fell s Point interest. Between the three the discussion became very hot and menacing, and the whole town was, for a considerable period, seething like a pot. There was a great deal of talk, a great deal of gesticu lation, many councils and conventions, and many men of many minds. Luckily it occurred to some of the wiser among them to suggest three market-houses in place of the old one. This happy thought took effect, and harmony was restored, as it ought always to be in political dissensions, by compromise. It was accordingly resolved to build one market-house in Hanover Street, one at Fell s Point, and the chief and largest of the three on Harrison Street upon the bed of the Old Swamp. These improvements were undertaken and completed at once. A great benefaction was conferred upon the town by the draining of the marsh, which was successfully accomplished ; 260 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. a large force of masons and carpenters was employed to raise the building and lo ! where the bulrush and the water-lily grew, and the wild fowl fed, and the ortolan and rail flocked among the reeds, a grand structure arose and loomed upon the sight of admiring citizens. A vast roof, supported on brick pillars, spread out its broad shelter over a pavement of brick ; and behold a new architectural glory ! Full^many a good-living, provident townsman, fond of creature comforts, and skilful to discern their qualities, has, since that day, re plenished his basket and store with the choicest of this world s dainties, at the stalls of the Marsh Market. Officially this is known as the Centre Market ; but the draining of the Swamp lingered so strong upon the memory of the last generation and so struck their fancy, that they were not willing to give up a name which so significantly suggested its origin. The three market-houses yet survive, enlarged and im proved, to contribute to the comfort of the city, and to remind us of the thrift and foresight of our ancestors. The town having now passed through the perils of its youth, and established itself upon a basis from which it might look the world in the face as an authentic, capable and self- sustaining body, it was thought entitled to assume a higher grade on the roll of political communities. Accordingly it made known its wishes to the Legislature, and just four years before the close of the century, on the last day of December, Anno Domini 1796, it obtained a charter by which it was erected into the City of Baltimore. The census of 1800 gives it a population of twenty-six thousand five hundred and four teen. In the ten years preceding that enumeration the popu lation had been doubled- And now another half century has gone by, and a great change has come over all things. Ancient memories are dwarfed before the realities of the present. This epoch be gan with twenty-seven thousand inhabitants it has ended with one hundred and seventy thousand. It began with a few handicrafts and mechanical workshops, feebly supplied with MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 261 power it has ended with an array of manufacturing ability and product, of which but a faint idea is expressed in the lux uriance and beauty of fabric, the various and multiform inge nuity of contrivance, and the magnitude and completeness of the machinery now exhibited within these walls. It began with a small capital in the hands of active, shrewd and enter prising traders it has ended with a vast commerce, domestic and foreign, of which the constantly multiplying results, seen in the growth and embellishment of the city, seem almost to defy sober estimate. In this half century Baltimore has taken a high place among the cities of the Union. It is fast growing to be the most beautiful of all. I do not say the most distinguished for the costliness of its buildings, either public or private, nor for its institutions whether belonging to science, art, or charity ; in these points we are yet much behind some other communi ties. But I do say, what thousands of impartial observers often repeat , that for the taste displayed in the structure of our best dwelling-houses, the singular excellence of their material, the striking advantages of their position in reference to light, air and outlook for the general beauty of large sections of the city in the location of the streets for the striking and pic turesque effect belonging to the landscape from many points upon our hills, for salubrity of climate, facility in the supply of the necessaries of life and the cheapness of the most es teemed luxuries in short, for every valuable accessory that may contribute to the gratification of the taste as well as the sense of comfort, our broad land does not furnish a more pleasant abiding-place than this city. Still, we are only in progress towards our higher destiny. Much remains to be done. We look with becoming pride upon what has been already achieved : to our various benevo lent and charitable establishments ; to our schools, especially to our public-schools, so admirably organized and provided, so full of good in their ministration ; to our University and colleges and academies, adapted to professional as well as or- 262 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. dinary instruction ; to our Historical Society, our public libra ries and associations of young men connected with them ; to our monuments which serve as landmarks to guide the stran ger to the most attractive points which the city offers to his view. I wish I could include in this outline of the composi tion of the city some great park or public ground for the rec reation of our people, which every one feels to be so neces sary, and in the procurement of which all would so cheerfully sustain the public authorities. We have reason to exult in the enterprise which has al ready supplied us with four great railroads leading to the four points of the compass, and giving us an easy access to the remotest borders of the Union. We exult in our ship-yards, where the genius of our mechanics has already won, in the highest and most complex of all mechanical arts, a reputation which Baltimore claims as a distinctive and peculiar heritage. I cannot dwell upon all the prominent features of the specta cle presented by this survey, with the deliberation necessary even to an enumeration of the various vocations, labors and achievements in which the growth of our city has become so striking a subject of contemplation. I hasten from these to one more evidence of that spirit which unerringly points to a glorious future. Among many good things accomplished, and among many yet in embryo, the present generation has lifted up its thoughts to one great work of signal utility in the establishment of " The Maryland Institute for the promotion of the Mechan ic Arts." This Institute has a history as brilliant as it yet is brief. But four years ago a few gentlemen of this city me chanics themselves, and most intelligent friends to the expan sion and perfections of those arts to which they had been edu cated, conceived the idea of this association. They brought to their consultations upon it, an experience that pointed out the best scheme of organization, and to their labor in its ac complishment, a zeal which rendered failure impossible. It was scarcely promulgated before it was received by the most MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 263 judicious and thoughtful portion of this community with such hearty demonstrations of favor, as showed it to be in harmony with a great public want. The Mechanics of Baltimore re sponded to it with an alacrity which bespoke equally their good sense and their just appreciation of the true interests of their order. And thus it came about that, almost at once, the Insti tute assumed a commanding position in the face of the city ; and, in the first year of its establishment, surprised even its most sanguine friends by the success of its Exhibition. I do not know in the history of similar or kindred institu tions a parallel to the rapidity with which this has grown upon the esteem of the community and attained to a maturity so vig orous and healthful. Three years were spent in bringing the organization to what it now is. The Legislature at its last ses sion incorporated the Company, and gave further earnest of its regard for the institution in the grant of an annuity of five hun dred dollars. The future experience of the benefits of this es tablishment to the community of the State, we may hope, will again commend it to their bounty, and bring it new resources to enlarge the field of its usefulness. It is scarcely # year gone by, since the members of the So ciety resolved upon the erection of a building adapted to the various duties and necessities which their plan of operations embrace. In projecting this, they determined to build an ed ifice of such dimensions and character as should not only af ford ample space and verge for every use contemplated in the several departments of the Institute, but which should also con tribute to the adornment of the city. This project was no soon er made known than it found friends at hand to give it aid. The city authorities, foremost in this good cause, became the powerful patron of the enterprise, and with a spirit of enlighten ed munificence which has won them universal praise, made an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars to the object, and added to this a donation of the site for the building. Private citizens contributed largely, and the fund was soon provided. It is but little more than six months since the corner-stone was 264: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. laid and lo ! once again, where the bulrush and the water-lily grew, and the wild fowl fed, and the ortolan and the rail flock ed among the reeds, another great architectural glory rises out of the bosom of the ancient marsh ! The old Market- House, so rich in the old-time memories, cowers under the shade of the new palace of art, and surrenders to the overarch ing grandeur of the present, all its trophies of the past. So far, the history of the Institute. Let this magnificent saloon, and this dazzling display to-night of the works around us, tell the triumph of its founders. Here is the Maryland In stitute with more than a thousand members. Here it is seat ed under this stately roof, amidst the countless creations of our country s arts the special objects of its care. Here it is, with its premiums to reward industry and genius ; with its Academy of Design to teach that exquisite skill which makes the Beautiful the hand-maiden to the Useful ; with its school of instruction in the complicated and delicate processes of that expansive chemical science which, in modern times, has be come the great auxiliary and instrument of the mechanic arts. Here it is, with its lecture-rooms inviting the teachers of eve ry science to take the chair for the instruction of crowds of emulous students, whom an honorable ambition of knowledge ever gathers under the eye of the teacher. These are the ob jects which surround the Institute, which fills its halls and in vite its guardianship. Look upon this whole scheme, and say whether the men who have established this and those who sus tain it have not conferred a great benefaction upon Baltimore : whether they have not done something worthy of this gener ation to speed our city onwards in that career of which I have taken some notice to-night. You, gentlemen of the Institute, are entitled to the honor of having originated a great thought. It is embodied in this noble structure ; in these multitudinous exhibitions of the ca pacity, genius and talent of our workmen. It is still more ad mirably embodied in the organization of this Institute. Its destined effect and necessary result are seen in the honora- MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 265 ble emulation you have stirred up in this community, and in the fruits of this emulation manifested in the alacrity with which our intelligent working population have taken advantage of the means of instruction you have placed at their command. Every product of the creative power with which God has endowed man is a source of pleasure to its author. Every cre ation of human skill originates in an act of the mind, which, in its appropriate course of development, assumes material form and outward manifestation thus becoming visible, and taking its place in the rank of actual existences. A happy in stinct brings a strongly recognized sense of gratification to the mind at every step of this process. There is a pleasure in the conception of the thought, and a new delight in each success ive step towards its final point of material consummation. There is not in this room a fabric, an implement, a piece ol machinery, or the product of any machinery, no trivial toy, no engine vast, no work of simplest handicraft, that has not, in its degree, brought a joy to the mind of its author, and which he has not recognized to himself as a source of happiness to be sought again. The workman has felt the " blessed glow of labor" in his mind and body, and in that has found a happi ness which has made his work a boon of mercy to him from his God. I am sure, gentlemen, that I do not exaggerate or misrepresent your own feelings, when I say that the same pleas ure which the humblest workman has been conscious of, in the creation of the things around us, has been also in higher degree yours, in the accomplishment of this entire organization, the product of your labors, and the conception of your minds. If any thing can be added to that gratification, you have it in the well-deserved thanks of this community and in your own rec ognition of the consciousness of having performed a duty of good works to your generation,, The things we see at this day I mean not here only in this hall, but everywhere over the world connected with the de velopment of mechanical art ; the new and universal interest which has grown up in all nations in reference to it ; the hon- 12 266 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. or that has been conferred upon it, the instruction that has been poured into it, the enlargement and multiplication of its connections with the highest order of science by which its prog ress is marked, the societies that have been formed for its en couragement, the journals that have been established for its teachings, the great distinction and celebrity which have been given, of late, to the men who have become eminent in it ; the visible increase of the respect of mankind for its pursuit, man ifested in the general sentiment to applaud and sustain those who have devoted themselves to it as their vocation and the abandonment of those absurd and, I may call them, wicked prejudices, which for centuries have been allowed to turn the hearts of men against mechanical labor and to work the foul in justice of that long proscription which disgraced humanity all these considerations force upon our attention the conviction that a new and happy epoch has arrived, out of which is to grow in fact, is now most conspicuously growing an illimita ble sum of good to our race. These phenomena belong to an unmistakable civilization, such as the world has not yet seen and the ultimate result of which no foresight can picture, perhaps no imagination reach. The world has been slow in its progress to this point. Society has gone through many throes and pains, through many conflicts of passion, before it has seen its day. It has groaned under many stripes, has walked over many burning ploughshares, been bound on many racks, before it has arrived at the conviction, that there are better uses to be made of man than degrading him his la bor, stifling his mind in compelled ignorance, or extinguishing his body in fire. We have seen in the history of Christendom some very dis tinctly marked phases in the condition and polity of modern nations. There was a time, embracing some centuries, when all the great concerns of society were regulated with a view to clerical supremacy, and the world was brought into subordina tion to the ambition of priests. The Church was supreme in the politics of nations whether for good or ill, it concerns us MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 267 not now to inquire. Contemporaneous with this dominion, and a conspicuous instrument and ally in maintaining it, was that military despotism which pervaded every avenue of life, and enforced submission with the sword. In this double pressure upon the incapable and feeble masses of society, mechanical vocations were not only stinted in their means instruction, but were absolutely branded with ignominy, and the men who pur sued them were stigmatized as the basest of their race. I need not run over the outline of that unhappy history which tells of this long and dreary degradation of a down-trodden and perse cuted class ; nor even stop to exult over those few bright pages which record the narrative of the birth of freedom brought to light by the stout hearts and sturdy blows of the craftsmen who, in that dark night of despotism, built up the Free Towns, and there planted the only citadels in the Old World, where the embers of human liberty founds an altar to guard them from ex tinction, and where, finally, they were nursed into an undying flame. He who reads that history will see that to the crafts men the mechanics of the olden time, is the world indebted for the first effective defence of the rights of man. Passing over this long space, in which the genius of peaceful labor was crushed under the iron heel of the soldier, and that succeeding age in which Christendom became a great field of carnage in what, by a wicked perversity of phrase, has been called the religious wars I take pleasure in noting the succession of that more auspicious day which is known as the Commercial Epoch, and which came on angels wings to scatter the blessings of protected industry over a torn and bleeding world. Then did the husbandman first begin to realize the happiness of sitting secure beneath his own vine ; and then the artisan, so long dejected and debased, to look up from earth to heaven, and, with a smile of gratulation, to renew his toil, filled with radiant hopes of the future. From that day, his course has been onward. One by one, the prejudices which old abuse had encrusted upon the mind of society have melted away. The Son of Labor has found his soul expanding to the proper dimensions of a strong 268 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. and independent man, and his fellow-men, recognizing his worth, are everywhere giving him the cheerful salutation and welcome of a brother. Our happy country has taught much to mankind, but nothing more significantly or more effectively than that great truth manifested in our practice, that all distinc tions artificially established between men, whether by positive ordinance, or by the prejudices of education, are but so many devices to mar what God has made, and to render both those who have the best and those who have the worst in the division, less useful as citizens and less worthy as men. What we, in America, have ordained from the beginning, Europe has lately found it expedient to consider, and, we may hope, to adopt. The world is now entering upon the Mechanical Epoch. There is nothing in the future more sure than the great triumphs which that epoch is to achieve. It has already advanced to some glorious conquests. What miracles of mechanical inven tion already crowd upon us ! Look abroad and contemplate the infinite achievements of the steam power. Reflect a moment on all that has been done by the railroad. Pause to estimate, if you can, with all the help of imagination, what is to result from the agency now manifested in the operations of the telegraph. Cast a thought over the whole field of scientific mechanical improvement and its application to human wants, in the last twenty years to go no further back and think what a world it has made how many comforts it has given to man, how many facilities ; what it has done for his food and raiment, for his dwelling and furniture, for his communication with his fellow-man in every clime ; for his instruction in books, his amusements, his safety : what new lands it has opened, wha-< old ones made accessible : how it has enlarged the sphere of his knowledge and conversancy with his species. It is all a great, astounding marvel a miracle which it oppresses the mind to think of a theme of infinite and unexaggerable compass. It is the smallest boast which can be made for it to say that, in all desirable facilities of life, in the comfort that depends upon mechanism, and in all that is calculated to delight the senses or MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 269 instruct the mind, the man of this day, who has secured to him self a moderate competence, is placed far in advance of the most wealthy, powerful and princely of ancient times : might I not say, of the times less than a century gone by? And yet we have only begun ; we are but on the threshold of this epoch. A great celebration is now drawing to a close the celebration, by all nations, of the New Era. A vast multi tude of all peoples, nations and tongues has been but yesterday, gathered under a magnificent Crystal Palace, in the greatest city of the world, to illustrate and distinguish the achievements of art no less, also, to dignify and exalt the great mechanical fraternity who have filled that palace with wonders. Is not this fact, of itself, charged with a volume of comment ? What is it but the setting of the great distinctive seal upon the nineteenth century ? An advertisement of the fact that society has risen to occupy a higher platform than ever before. A proclamation, from the high places, announcing honor honor immortal to the workmen who fill this world with beauty, comfort and power; honor to be forever embalmed in history, to be perpetuated in monuments, to be written in the hearts of this and succeeding generations It will be written that a mechanic, gifted with a genius more potent in its spell than Aladdin s Lamp, built up, with matchless art, a gorgeous palace such as the world had never seen ; that the universal mechanical skill filled it with rarest treasures picked from the work-shops of nations ; that showers of gold, past all belief, have poured upon it with a pro fusion transcending classical or Oriental fable ; and that Kings and Queens and Princes and world-renowned soldiers and states men have ministered within its walls, in voluntary and delighted homage, to the whole company of artists and artisans who have made the " World s Fair" what it is. Henceforth artists and artisans are destined to wear these honors and to see them multiplied in the increasing respect and consideration of mankind. Even now, in England, as every paper that comes over the Atlantic informs us, crowds are following American agricultural machines in their work upon OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. the harvest field, with an admiration that involuntarily rises into an exulting tribute to the genius of our mechanics, which the proudest in the land are proud to pay. An American workman has sent across the waters a little specimen of naval architecture which seems almost to have " frighted the isle" of Britain " from her propriety." One might almost deem that our yacht " America" had wrested the sceptre from the Queen of the Seas, and moored the ancient ruler of the waves forever to the rock upon her shore. Every Englishman joins in a generous acknowledgment and not, indeed without some show of an honest joy to see the skill that can overmatch himself, of this triumph of our country s genius. Our mechanics had, some time before, sent them the New York steamers to teach them the first lesson ; " The America," perhaps, has not taught them the last. But in all this there is something more than the con test, the victory and the exultation ; there is a great fact lying upon the surface of all we see the elevation of mechanical art in the opinion of the wise and the great, and by force of their example and teaching also, in the opinion of the whole mass of mankind. That old prescriptive world which, for centuries, has turned its back upon the mechanic, now finds something in him for admiration and honor; now perceives the truth that all material work is born of intellect, the higher work of the higher intellect, and each kind in its degree, partaking of the dignity inherent in intellectual products. The time is at hand, if it has not already come, when the full perception and development of this truth will impress soci ety with a new form of economic polity. Mechanical pur suits will receive an impulse that will drive them into the ascen dant in the distribution of personal vocation; they will batter down and obliterate the old prejudice which has hitherto fostered the pride of professional pre-eminence. Men will find motive to make fewer lawyers and doctors out of their children, and more mechanics. Is not that time already come in the United States, and should not every well-wisher of his country rejoice that it has come ? We want the men who can build up a na- MARYLAND INSTITUTE. 271 tion, who can convert the secret forces of nature into the living, working forces of practical mechanism, and with these subdue want, ignorance, and vice. The triumphs of the bar, and the medical theatre have won many votaries to the professions ; easy emoluments from them have won more ; but I know no triumphs of genius gathered in these fields that may claim ascendancy in dignity or usefulness, over the triumphs achieved in mechanical art indeed, but few equal to them. The highest glories of Jurisprudence and Physic challenge, in my appreciation, no re nown above the glories of the Steamboat, the Cotton Mill, and the Telegraph. When I look upon this vast enginery, this infi nite complication of wheels, this exquisitely delicate adjustment of parts, and this sure, steady, and invariable result shown in the operation of the perfect machine ; when I contemplate the tools and implements by which it is made, the abstruse math ematics that have been employed in them, and the extraordi nary acuteness of the intellectual power that has invented and contrived them I am lost in admiration of the genius that masters the whole, and am almost hopeless of the effort to com prehend, much less to imitate it. My conviction is that for a hundred men, who are capable of making a respectable figure in professional life, you will not find more than one who is able to comprehend and apply the intricate science and practical- detail belonging to the highest branches of architecture and enginery. While society recognizes these opinions, and is adopting them and conforming its usages to them, a corresponding duty presses upon the mechanical portion of the community. They have a new destiny before them and its first demand is cultivation. It says to them, throw your whole mind into your vocation, improve it by study, penetrate the philosophy of your craft, and make yourself learned in the principles that lie at the bottom of all crafts. Set up your schools of natural science, multiply your institutes, furnish yourself with all the apparatus and means of instruction, and then go to work, at all spare hours, to store your minds with the knowledge that will not * 272 OCCASIONAL ADDEESSES. only render you expert and wise workmen, but will dignify and elevate your calling, and place it in the respect of mankind, where God first placed it, when he said, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread." SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 273 THE SPIEITOF THE AGE; FALSE AND TKUE PKOGRESS. A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE MECHANICS INSTITUTE, BALTIMORE, FEBRUARY 7TH, 1854. " This boy, says the Constable, although he is frequently told to, won t move on ! I m always a moving on, Sir I ve always been a moving, and am a moving on ever since I was born. Where can I possible move, Sir, more nor I do move ? He wont move on, says the Constable, calmly, although he s been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into cus tody? Oh, my eye ! where can I move ! cries the boy, clutching quite desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor. Don t you come none of that, or I shall make blessed short work of you. says the Constable, giving him a passionless shake. My instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five hundred times. But where ? cries the boy. Well really, Constable, you know says Mr. Snagsby, wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt really that does seem a question Where, you know ? My instructions don t go to that, replies the Constable, my in structions are that this boy is to move on ! " " BLEAK HOUSE." MR. EPHRAIM JENKINSON, a venerable old gentle man, whose temples were shaded by locks of silver gray, and who enjoyed a green old age which " see med to be the re sult of health and benevolence " for so he is described by the good Doctor Primrose, the celebrated Vicar of Wakefield was somewhat distinguished for an opinion he was often accus- 12* 274 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. tomed to express, " that the world was in its dotage." The worthy Ephraim may be remembered by his exploit of palming off upon poor Moses, the Vicar s son, that famous gross of green spectacles with silver-wash rims and shagreen cases, and also for his handling the credulous Doctor Primrose himself, no better in the sale of his, the Doctor s, old horse Blackberry. This same sage, Ephraim Jenkinson, was quite of opinion that " the world was in its dotage," an opinion that he was memor ably in the habit of sustaining by certain pithy tags of Greek philosophy, which give us an encouraging opinion of his learn ing. Whether we may regard him as the father of this dogma, or whether he borrowed it from an older generation, it is a fact that it was not a merely personal or exclusive opinion of his, but has had more or less acceptation and entertainment in the speculations of the learned and in the vociferations of the un learned, during a great part of the last and present centuries. It was at one time almost the universal established orthodoxy of European thinkers to hold that, in America, the productions of nature, including the race of man and the classes of inferior animals, were degenerated below the standard of European growth. Whereas, on our side, we have sometimes held, and perhaps hold now, for I have heard it so argued that the Caucassian type of man on the Eastern continent, and of course all inferior types of man, there, had lost their ancient vigor, both of mind and body, that the stock had dwindled in facul ties and proportions and required to be renovated by new seed. While at the same time, both Europe and America have often united in expressing the opinion that all Asia and Africa have decidedly fallen greatly below the dimensions, spiritual and physical, of the Patriarchs, and, proportionably also, of us the European and American stock, which claims to be the favored off-shoots of the old patriarchial trunk. Thus, each of the two continents of Christendom has been respectively believed to be in a progress of decline by quite a numerous school of philoso phers in each, and these equally concur in a joint opinion that all Heathendom is so : and therefore, as a corollary from these SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 275 several opinions, there has come to be a partial and pretty broad adoption of the respectable Mr. Jenkinson s doctrine, that the world was in its dotage or, at least, taking the track that leads that way. This class of philosophers who, it is ap parent, are every day suffering a diminution of numbers and are fast disappearing from the groves of the academy on both sides of the Atlantic, are obviously tinged with rather a som bre and desponding complexion, an d are suspected to labor under that kind of hypochondria which is marked by a constitu tional aversion to looking on the bright side of things. They are, in fact, the Smellfungi, of whom we have read, who see nothing but rotteness in this beautiful world, and have rather a taste for contemplating nature and art in their worst aspects. They may, therefore, be called the Pessimists of the modern school. Opposite, in all particulars, to these, are the Opti mists, the most hopeful and sanguine of all philosophers, who have grown exceedingly into fashion in these our times. They believe in an almost infinite perfectibility of human na ture, and regard Man and the World, as destined, through con tinual development, very soon to attain to that millennial beat itude which both ancient and modern prophecy have prefig ured, in mystic oracle, as a final fruit of humanity. The fervor and zeal of this school have engendered a great variety of opin ions and projects, which may be said, in their general exhibi tion, to constitute a distinctive and striking characteristic of our age. Starting with the postulate of man s capability to be ripened into absolute perfection, they have adopted a hot-bed system of culture for the purpose of forcing his growth and productiveness. Stimulated by this idea, they have become chiefly notable for the invention of the numerous philosophic theories and fantasies (some of which make the old Common Sense World open their eyes very wide) which contain the seeds of that large crop of Isms that have introduced so many strange terms into our language and which have so sadly wor ried and perplexed our dictionary makers to keep up with them. They have favored us with divers working-plans for the 276 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. construction and evolution of the principles of Socialism and Communism, with a strange machinery of circles, sections and phalanxes to illustrate the new Christianity of St. Simon and the -political economy of Fourier and Fanny Wright. Their school has furnished a score of teachers to instruct mankind and womankind in the necessity of disencumbering themselves of some of the older morals which they have found to be trou blesome impediments on the march to perfection. Mormon- ism, with its Oriental privileges of the Harem and its Pacha gov ernment, is to be traced to this school a left-handed offspring which the Perfectionists are not yet quite ready to acknowl edge. From this cradle, also, come our clairvoyant physicians, our table-turning statesmen, and our mesmeric theologians all that bevy of philosophers who have become famous for their patronage of those labor-saving spirits that so kindly edit Weekly Newspapers, play on the guitar, expound Bacon and Swedenbourg, and cause vulgar lead-pencils to make themselves ridiculous by dancing over sheets of letter-paper in writing silly messages from the illustrious dead to the would-be notorious living. The Optimists are inveterate Reformers. In their view, every thing wants mending, from the constitution of the government down to the coffee-roaster in the kitchen. They think our laws don t work as they ought to do that our institu tions are radically wrong, and that our ancestors who made them were old Fogies who didn t understand their business. We may remark also that they are generally inclined to affect juvenility, and are therefore fond of speaking of themselves as Young England, Young France, Young Ireland, Young Italy, Young America, Young Every thing ; and they seem to con sider it their duty to berate and deride Old Every thing as a fool for standing by Solomon and the Ten Commandments and confessing his predilections for the Proverbs. There is another trait in the times which would seem to be an incidental product of this philosophy. Every other man or woman you meet upon a public theatre I mean those you en counter outside of the sphere of domestic life is likely to have SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 277 a " mission" just now. This may indeed be called the epoch of missions. One has a mission to take to pieces the social compact, to clean it, and repair it with new wheels and levers, as if it were a worn-out watch ; while another has a mission only to brush and oil some one part of it : to see, for instance, that the member of the body politic feeds on the proper diet, or that he swallows the right kind of physic ; in regard to which there is some contrariety of opinion, whether the pill should be very large or very small, whether it should be com posed of mineral or only vegetable ingredients, to which we might add other questions, all of which have been regarded as sufficiently weighty to allow of the formation of sub-schools. The same philosophizing tendency which has suggested the mis sion has brought us also to the discovery of certain wonderful creatures who shine out as fixed stars in the firmament of time, known by the distinction of Representative Men and Women. Every country has now, at least, one Colossus of this stamp. The mission being a predestined labor or allotment of duty to which a given number of industrious human beings are consign ed, the man who first illustrates and organizes it, in any great en deavor, or who subsequently becomes so identified with it, that it is difficult to distinguish which is which, that is to say, which is the man and which is the mission, both having got to signify the same thing as, for example, Mr. Pickwick or Mrs. Caudle, whose names may be turned into Verbs and adjectives which everybody will understand to express an idea significant of what they have done in the world. Such a man, therefore becomes, according to the new philosophy, a Representative man meaning thereby that he incarnates or embodies in him self the* principles, designs and ends of all the little men or mannikins who adopt his doctrine, work in his harness and develope their little Paul- Pry activities to make a noise in cre ation, in the order that he has prescribed. In the same way the great woman becomes Representative through the zeal of the little blossoms or mignonettes of women who follow in her footsteps. Thus, I look upon that indefatigable lady, Mrs. 278 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. Jellyby, while driving with such stupendous industry her Afri can scheme for cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboolagha, on the left bank of the Niger, as undoubtedly a vast Representative woman, who ideally germinates in her self and pre-announces the essential principle of a hundred en terprises of kindred nature which now attract the regard and occupy the time of many matrons and spinsters both in Eu rope and America. I cannot, in justice to a great historical figure of our time, here omit to notice, also, the valiant and per severing Mrs. Bloomer, who though not yet triumphant is still bravely militant, under most trying difficulties and discourage ments, in her grand design of putting all the women of both hemispheres into trousers. This heroine, who so courageously incorporates into her own identity and gives a living form to a great principle, which has, in all ages, been recognized as an aspiration of her sex, and which is now struggling for utterance and personal manifestation in a whole congress of strong-mind ed women, has, in my opinion, a high claim to be canonized as a Representative woman : and this, not only in the metaphysi cal aspect of a representative of a principle, but even in the literal physical one of becoming externally to the eye, a repre sentative of man at least in his lower habiliments. While I am touching on these very delicate and perilous feminine subjects, I cannot entirely pass by another development which has some conspicuous connection with the question of Progress. I mean that rebellion which has ruffled the feathers of a whole political hen-roost on the subject of Woman s Rights. I don t mean to discuss these rights, not only because it is a very ab struse topic, upon which I confess myself to be cautious in giv ing an opinion, but also because it raises a correlative question of manifold details touching the duties of men, which, it is ev ident, if the women should succeed in establishing their plat form, would become exceedingly complicated and troublesome. Woman s Rights, if they should be once defined and acknowl edged, according to the formula which has been proposed, would bring the man portion to the necessity of studying the inscrut- SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 279 able mysteries belonging to that multitudinous class of employ ments in which are ranked the knitting of stockings, working crotchet and stewing plums, while the heads of families were fox-hunting, or manoeuvring squadrons of militia cavalry on side saddles, or, if Mrs. Bloomer should finally prevail, on saddles with double stirrups. Avoiding, therefore, a dissertation which must involve a consideration of these novel duties of mankind, I content myself with but a brief reference to this agitation of Woman s Rights, merely noting it as one of the forms in which modern philosophy is active at this day to improve society and advance the general interests of the world. I look upon this busy commotion, in fact, as yet, but a budding conspiracy among the flowers, whose declaration of independence is not sufficiently complete to allow it to be treated as statesmen should treat all political outbreaks, with full and fair consid eration of the question raised. The Congress has had frequent meetings, but have yet come to no bill of rights. All the flowers have been in council : " The striped carnation and the guarded rose, The vulgar wall-flower and smart gillyflower The polyanthus mean, the dapper daisy Sweet william and sweet marjoram, and all The tribe of single and of double pinks." When these beautiful creations shall agree upon the basis of the revolution and fly to arms, it may become a grave question whether the men will not be compelled to open theirs and sur render at discretion. In the mean time it may be dangerous to express an opinion, and so, I let it pass without further no tice. I recognize in these numerous theories, fashions of opin ion, forms of speech and apparent eccentricities of conduct a singular vivacity of intellect, boiling up in the caldron of hu man thought and imparting to its contents an unusual spiciness and pungency of flavor. They present unmistakable evi dence of one most salient and importunate fact which enters into and shapes every organism or crystallization of the theory 280 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of social life in this generation that is, a determined resistance to stagnation in any kind of knowledge either physical or intel lectual. A striking result of all this perturbation is, that, among other fruits, it has produced any number of volun teers who have enlisted in the most strange variety of service. It has thus given to the public or political theatre a scattered but numerous host devoted to a new faith which sums up its creed in the three articles of Manifest Destiny, Boundless Ex tension of the Area of Freedom, and Universal Annexation- - words of ominous import, as understood and entertained in our Republic. They address themselves to the imagination, in the dangerous illusion of a vision of illimitable country and homo geneous fellowship of the whole human race, brought to the enjoyment of our free institutions by a benevolent compulsion, which is thought to excuse any act of rapine or cupidity that may be perpetrated in its career. They seem to be illumin ated by the rays of a new morality, in the blaze of which all our ancient lights " pale their ineffectual fires" and shrink into vulgar tapers. The laws, the policy, the ethics, the cautions and monitions of our fathers, they regard as no better than old brick and mortar tumbled in heaps across the highway of pro gress, to be swiftly removed with pick-axe and spade, that the road may be made smooth for every crotchet and conceit of the day to drive upon it, with full team, at high speed, unobstructed by such nuisances as the old-fashioned conscience, with its trum pery of the faith of treaties, the rights of our neighbors, the du ties of place and good-will to man. These wonderfully energet ic persons think they have a right in their own phrase " to pitch into everybody, and take a hand in every thing" by virtue of a charter derived from race ; holding that their tribe of man kind is master of all other tribes, by a law of nature. They boast that the Anglo-Saxon is, by instinct, a land-stealer, and, by pre-eminent right, Lord paramount of every thing he can take ; as if these were his inherited virtues. They regard the Decalogue as a mere impertinence outside of our territorial limits, and, indeed, not rery binding at home. When, there- SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 281 fore, they are seen upon one of their benevolent expeditions in pursuit of manifest destiny, the world is apt to be favored with a pretty startling adventure. We are familiar with forays more than one wherein little detachments of choice spirits of this complexion, set out full armed with rifle, bowie-knife and revolver, the appropriate symbols of the charity of the Manifest Destiny and moving onward, without molestation from any public authority even apparently, without reproof from any private sentiment of the community, to carry the blessings of the new philosophy into the bosom of our neighbor provinces shooting down the few inhabitants who have the courage not to run away, plundering their families of the little wealth gathered in the simple pur suits of rural life, and extinguishing every right of person or property as a necessary method for the extension of the Area of Freedom. In this laudable pursuit they confer upon the favored objects of their benevolence the benefaction of a Buccaneer Government, raising themselves to the dignities of President, Secretaries and Judges, and dividing innumerable acres of land, abounding in gold, among the liberating army, as the due reward for so much toil and generous devotion to the imprescriptible rights of the Anglo-Saxon race. They very solemnly declare, after the approved manner of suffering patriots, the motives which impel them to take up arms among which we may read, as chief in the assortment, that new and striking discovery in morals, which imports, that when one people believe they can make better use of the lands and tenements, goods and chattels of another people, than such other people do themselves, then it becomes the highest duty of said one people to take the said lands, tenements and so forth, of such other people to their own use, and to annihi late the other people with rifle, powder and ball, in every case in which they may manifest dissatisfaction at the proce dure. Such warriors as these seldom pray. Their gaze is forward, not upward. Yet history is not without a precedent of a pious fervor moving an army to a great act of devotion 282 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. in this way. Heroes are sometimes obliged by stress of cir cumstances, to make up their minds " to grapple with despair" as the poet has it " and fall in glory s work" a phrase which corresponds to our more familiar one of " dying in the last ditch." I remember an incident of this kind, where a whole army felt itself constrained to fall to prayers, and, as its devotional exercise, on that occasion, has been faithfully preserved by the historian, I take some pleasure in respecting the pious breathings, uttered in alternate change, by the General and his men. We may see in this narrative how profoundly all were imbued with the modest but resolute spirit of the dis ciples of our Manifest Destiny. The event I allude to introduces to us Queen Elizabeth s famous Earl of Leicester, at the head of his forces in Tilbury Fort. He begins : " Oli, mighty Mars, if in thy homage bred Each point of discipline I ve still observed assist thy votary now." "Hear me!" interposed the Governor of the Fort, kneel ing : upon seeing which act of devotion of the Governor, the Master of the Horse, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Christoper Hat- ton and another Knight all simultaneously follow his example each crying out as he kneels, " And me !" Of course the rank and file do likewise and in this reverent posture they all repeat as with one voice : " Behold thy votaries submissive beg That thou wilt deign to grant them, all they ask, Assist them to accomplish all their ends And sanctify whatever means they use To gain them." I have taken some pains to take up this bit of history from the dusty records of the past, because it shows how very respectably the ethics of our Filibusters rest upon the practice SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 283 and the precepts of the greatest warriors of our mother country. So far our attention has been directed to a survey of the philosophies of those two great parties, the Pessimists and the Optimists, and to notice some of the more prominent forms in which their several doctrines have found utterance in the language and practice of our day. They belong to " the de velopment," and deserve especial remark whenever we under take to make an estimate of the manners and morals of this age. Indeed, we cannot satisfactorily exhibit the spirit of the present time without giving a conspicuous prominence to these peculiarities as active forces in shaping both the internal and external character of society. But it is very manifest these traits of the time do not show much progress, or at least progress in the way of healthful advance : the world has grown neither wiser nor better through the aid of these eccentricities of speculation and vagaries of conduct. If there be nothing better than these to show, I might affirm that our world has not only not stood still, but has actually gone backward ; and that in such a career, if it have no counteracting tendencies, it must finally fall into a hopeless infidelity of every thing good, and be surrendered up to the dominion of what Carlysle calls Universal Sham and make-believe, without any truth in it. But happily there is really a bright side to this question, and some grand results have been accomplished, of most encouraging aspect. It is very apparent that though the spirit of the age does run somewhat riot in the channel I have described, there is, after all, a large redeeming fund of wholesome energy, good sense and useful attainment, embedded in the mind of this generation, which are marvellously fruitful of good works, and which are operating with a most beneficent influence upon the destiny of our race. Even these irregular and errant fancies upon which I have descanted, wicked and charitable, amiable and absurd, as they are, in many of their excesses, have yet a quality which renders them, in the long run, comparatively 284 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. harmless. Prurient philosophies have a fortunate extrava gance in their excess that becomes the bridle by which we check them. And after all, I think that motion, though it tend to the eccentric I will not say motion that tends to wil ful mischief is preferable to that dead repose which accom plishes nothing. Out of this fermentation of mind, there comes up, somewhere, life and action, aim and effort which tell of a generation aspiring to do something ; and as public opinion and morals are generally stern and honest censors, they will for the most part be found potent enough to rebuke the madness or folly of any prevailing whim, and bring back the current of action into its proper, healthful course. The world will gather no green slime upon its waters, while they are thus agitated; and although there may come up much froth and foam to the surface, these are generally the signs of a wholesome sparking flood below. I look for something good even from Manifest Destiny. We may, perhaps, get out of it a Pacific Railroad and a ship channel across the Isthmus, although Terra Del Fuego be not annexed to our Union, and King Kamehameha the Third, may not be persuaded to abdi cate his royal honors in the luxurious court of Honolulu, to become a member of the Senate of the United States as the Honorable Senator from Hawaii. Now, believing as I do, in a real progress which has ac complished some very wonderful things, I am yet convinced that, in its secret forces and specific form of manifestation, it is but confusedly observed, and frequently much misconceived. Newspaper critics write a great deal about it preachers make sermons upon it ; stump orators luxuriate in it, as a subject for which they are always ready when they have nothing else to say ; and in this mixture of good and bad treatment of the question, the public mind is as often led astray as set in the right track. While, therefore, we are aware of a powerful im pulse for good, stimulating the vital functions of society, it is not less true that there is, in a state of striking activity, anoth er impulse which is false, flippant and obtrusive in its action, SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 285 and which is, to some extent, counteracting the good, by stir ring up and making turbid the waters that lie at the bottom of that well which is reputed to be the lurking-place of truth : that it engenders mysticism and fanatical arrogance and per emptory claim to say and do a great many absurd things ; and that, in some of its influences, it makes men fatalists, who, if they succeed in their undertakings, are inflamed into greater arrogance ; or, if they fail, become infurious and charge Prov idence with their discomfiture. Progress is movement. We hear, consequently, a great deal of the movement party a name invented to indicate those who claim to be the friends of progress. As it is, all over the world, the popular party, it necessarily embraces a great many persons who have no very precise idea of what they mean. The true men of progress are, perhaps, not the most conspicuous in the party, and are certainly not the most clamorous ; for the great work of mankind is generally done very quietly, with much meditation and study. Great strength is always calm and unostentatious. It works by the lamp and in the hours of repose, and is apt to shun the huzzah of the multitude. Now the ostensible leaders of the movement, not being the real agents who effect it, but only the standard-bear ers who conduct the march of the procession, are, manifestly, often at a loss to know what direction to take, and therefore, now and then take a step backward instead of forward. The world hears so much about this moving on, and there are so many flattering things said to it about its extraordinary capacity to do so in the present generation ; in fact, the public mind has been so much possessed and crammed with ideas touching the development-theory, that it has become the con firmed opinion of many persons, that every thing of the pres ent day is better than every thing of the past, and that every thing of the future is to be better than every thing of the pres ent : that intellect is not only making new acquisitions, but is evolving new faculties : that the man of this day, both in moral and physical character, is a more gifted and capable 286 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. creature than his ancestors, and that the work assigned to him is more effectively done now than it was ever clone before. To use a western country phrase which, itself, is a fruit of the development that he can, as well in a spiritual as a cor poreal sense, " dive deeper, stay under longer, and come up dryer" than the man of any other era since the days of Gog and Magog. I am unwilling to dispute this assertion so far as altogeth er to deny it. Indeed, in the main, I concede it : for, truly, we do live in a very stirring time ; and I don t wonder that even judicious and sober thinkers, when they survey the field of human enterprise and note its achievements in the last fifty years, should find their equanimity somewhat shaken, and should fall into some extravagance of opinion and expectation, both as regards the present and future. All Christendom is actively pursuing a grand career of improvement, and the in genious and able men of all countries are successfully combin ing their labors to increase the leverage by which civilization is raised upon a broader and stronger platform. It is not a mere rhetorical brag, but a most cheerful fact, that large divis ions, communities and classes of many nations, comprehend ing a good part of the whole human family, have been brought, at this era, to enjoy the fruits of a higher intellectual and phys ical culture, manifested in the increase of personal comforts and the means of moral education : that they get more food and raiment from the old seed-fields of the earth, than their forefathers : that they have made infinite additions to the ara ble and productive surface of earth by reclaiming waste and by subjugating new lands : that they get more wealth from the same amount of labor, add more labor from the same amount of wealth than ever before : that the earth nourishes more peo ple and nourishes them more abundantly. There are more teachers, and people learn more ; more books, and they read more ; more subjects, and they think more. On the other hand there are fewer motives to strife and nations are less apt to fall into brawls and wars than of old. Peace has a longer SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 287 reign. Indeed, we may find in this single cause alone, the long and fruitful peace of our century, perhaps the chief fac tor for the solution of the problem of progress. This mag nificent phenomenon of social improvement, in our own coun try, in its yearly work, outruns the most sanguine reckoning and we have abundant proof that what we see here delineated in broader lines and with more rapid execution, may be seen more or less visibly impressed upon the most eminent nations of Christendom. They show, as we do, the tokens and testi monies of that general melioration which is the dominant fact of the age. Peace and plenty, luxury and refinement, strength and repose warm the landscape of human life with a blessed sunshine which falls upon many humble households in many climes, and cheers the heart of labor in many a workfield, with a conscious security and certainty of reward which it has never felt before. I do not wonder that our own countrymen should fall into some vainglorious conceptions of their own significance as quite an active, present motive power in creation, and as a predestinated future power to do some great things hereafter. The world has, at length, begun to allow that our Republic possesses some vigor that it has a pretty strong will of its own, and a pretty strong hand to back it ; and as we are very sensitive to this kind of good opinion, we are naturally inclined to boast of our progress. The secret of our success lies, part ly, in our fertile and extensive country, even more, in our form of government ; but chiefly, in the characters of our people, who to great industry and perseverance, unite a singular alert ness and skill to take advantage of the practical wisdom of others. They throttle occasion like a bull-dog, and never allow it to escape them. In the advantages of free government, and extent of territory, and in the means which this last affords to give comfortable subsistence to population, our country is al together above comparison with any contemporary nation. But when we come to speak of our people in a comparison with the people of other nations, and of the contributions which all 288 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. are making to the advancement of civilization, it concerns our own honor and wisdom that we should fairly estimate and do justice to those with whom we are co-laborers. I know that this is a difficult thing for a self-confident and prosperous peo ple to do. Know thyself is as necessary a precept to a .nation as to an individual. We must admit that other nations go much beyond us in the acquisitions of art and science. Nor should we forget that the progress of the United States is only more striking because it is more rapid through the span of our historical existence than that of our fatherlands. We have reached in one century what they have only attained in many. They have toiled in a perpetual conflict with ignorance, war, and despotic authority, opening their way through many bloody battles and often set backward by defeat. We have reaped the fruits of their victories, and have come into the field of our national life when the conflict was over, not a new people, but a fragment of the old, in a new home. We came laden with the knowledge and implements of civilization, the trophies our ancestors had gathered from centuries, and had bequeathed to us. At the date of our constitution, when we first assumed a place among the powers of the earth as an or ganized government, we stood upon the same level with the rest of the world, and advanced with all other nations in the race from that starting-point From that epoch, with many disadvantages resulting from feebleness, we had one great ele ment of future strength which they had not. We had a land to replenish and adorn, and certainty, therefore, of continual increase of numbers. Our increase has not only followed the natural law of population, but has been supplied by great ac cessions from immigration which has poured upon our shores so many of the best, not without some few of the worst, of the human material that goes to make up a powerful State. While we grew populous our parent communities either declined in numbers or remained stationary, or, at least, very slowly added to their aggregate of people. This was the general condition of the problem of popula- SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 289 tion beyond the Atlantic. But it was far from being the con dition of the problem of the advancement of these older com munities in knowledge and art. Looking, then, Jo these elements in the national life and career of our own country and in that of our competitors, and fairly weighing their influence upon each, we may compare our advance with theirs ; and in summing up all that each has done, I think we may be satisfied with our share. It is quite praise enough to say that we have accomplished as much for useful art, in proportion to our resources, as they have : that the world is as much indebted to us as we are to the world, for the contributions which genius has made to the common stock of invention, discovery and good things achieved. In elegant art and luxurious products of taste, and in the highest works of intellectual faculty in those undertakings, in short, which can only be fostered by great individual wealth, and which indicate the most elaborate phase of national refine ment we may not claim as abundant, or as perfect a produc tion as the most distinguished of our competitors only be cause we have not yet got through the heavier tasks which a graver necessity presents to a young nation, and which do not leave us the leisure to look after and employ ourselves upon, the toys of life. We have not yet and this I think is a sub ject for congratulation arrived at the time to fill a Crystal Palace with gewgaws, but we have given to Agriculture a reap ing-machine, to ocean a steamer, to commerce a clipper, to the soldier a weapon and have made some other gifts of a like nature, which, together are perhaps worth the whole wealth of any National Exhibition of a whole country. In truth, we have too much yet to do with the great enginery of iron and wood, to be thinking very largely of figures in bronze and marble. Though even in these we now and then, at a leisure moment, throw off something quite worthy of being talked about. We are, therefore, fairly and honorably abreast with the best of mankind in the race of progress. We honestly pay our 13 290 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. quota to the nineteenth century, and look it manfully in the face as a people who does not owe it a penny of debt : who rather consider it, on the contrary, as greatly obliged to us for the lift it has got above the eighteenth, and^all other centuries. For certainly it is true that, although we have not done all the work ourselves, we have spurred on the rest of mankind to be stir themselves and sharpen their wits apace. Our revolution was not an insignificant fill-up to the imagination of Europe seeing how it has kept their watchmen on duty ever since ; and put the stiff, old-fashioned despotisms of the continent to some cost. The developments of our republican system have also greatly perplexed the old soothsayers with some unex pected teachings of the energy of free government ; and our active spirit of invention has whipped up the genius of the old world into efforts which surprise themselves. Europe would not, until very lately, confess her indebtedness to America, for any of these favors, and even now, after many manifestations of our capacity to teach somewhat, the acknowledgment is grudgingly made that in the great experiment of a self-govern ing nation, on this side of the Atlantic, we have developed a character that is entitled to be studied, and institutions that contribute something of value to the happiness of mankind. Our arts and arms are confessed to be respectable, and the best products of our ingenuity and industry are complimented, now and then, with the honor of being stolen from us and qui etly appropriated as very good things of which our rivals are quite proud. This alone is proof of good progress on one side. America walks closely at the heels of Europe, and if not looked upon by the old monarchies with affection, she is not altogether regarded in some quarters without fear. There are powers in Europe to whom our republic is not a pleasant contemplation. We rather haunt them and disturb their fan cies with a disagreeable image. They think there is some dia blerie in our free constitution, and they would be easier if we kept at a respectful distance from them, SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 291 " Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on And turns no more his head ; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." I will not arrogate for our own country the exclusive hon or of this awakening. There are other free governments be sides our own. The noble literature of England, France and Germany at this day affords proof abundant that free opinion has other magazines than the American mind, and that they may claim a most worthy fellowship with us as teachers of the rights and duties of man. May I not say that they even go ahead of us in the abundance, if not in the shrewdness of these teachings ? I am not one of those who believe that the great struggle of mind in this age is between autocracy and repub licanism that the world is ultimately to be ruled by the Czar or the Tribune. I think it pretty certain that the people of the world are to have their own way, and that free constitu tional government, with a strong infusion of the democratic element, is sure to be the next phase of European society at least, if it goes nowhere else on the older continents. Absolute despotism is growing to be an impossibility, whatever may be the ostensible, outward form of the government. It is grow ing more and more to be the policy and interest of monarchs themselves to consult and elevate the people, without which compliance they will find, before this century is out, any gov ernment will be impracticable. So far I have confined my view to the condition of the several communities or nations of Christendom. It would be but an insufficient and imperfect summary of the progress of this age, which did not include in it some notice of that vast world which lies beyond the dominion of the Cross. For not only on the bosom of Christian lands has this beneficent influ ence, I have described, descended to repair the strength of man kind. 292 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. There is something sublime in the throes and wrestlings that, at this moment, attend the awaking of the hitherto torpid bulk of Heathendom. A world-agitating romance of history is now weaving its marvellous plot out of the incidents which mark the fortunes of the mysterious East. That old beldam of nations, China, which most of us have hitherto only known by the grotesque pictures we have seen on certain blue dinner-plates and lacquered tea-chests, repre senting impossible trees growing near impossible bridges, and uncouth, burly men with long cues, and oblique-eyed women with little feet, lackadaisically fanning themselves in very prim gardens that seem always to be laid out near a pagoda j six stories high all hung round with bells this imperturbable old Sleeping Beauty, that has manifestly been waiting some thou sands of years for the Prince to come and wake her up has suddenly pricked the ears of all Europe and America with strange rumblings, denoting that the Prince had really come, and that she is beginning to open her eyes. Tidings have reached us that China, the ancient Cathay, is all astir in a grand clatter of bamboo lances and very noisy gongs. So tak ing is the news, that all the politicians and all the gossips and all the quidnuncs get out of breath in running after it ; the churchmen find no end to their wonder on reading it, and even the young ladies who patronize Bulwer and Dickens, lay down " My Novel" and " The Bleak House" to get a peep at the newspapers at every arrival from the East, to learn how speeds the astounding drama that is now enacting under " The destined walls Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can." The story is passing strange from its beginning, and grows more intense as the plot thickens. But a few years ago, a commercial incident of no great mo ment supplied the theme of the first act. It had relation only to the profits to be made out of a wretched trade in opium. SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 293 Conscientious England, in very shameless defiance of fhat moral theory which, in our country, is recognized as the essen tial principle of The Maine Liquor Law, conceived the idea of forcing this inspiring drug upon a people who were known to be so silly as to prefer their pagan custom of eating themselves drunk, to the Englishman s wiser habit of drinking himself up to that happy state, which compulsion the dignitaries of the Flowery Kingdom, who had determined upon a temperance re form, resisted as a most impertinent intrusion ; which in truth it was. This attempt to compel and this refusal to be com pelled begot a little war of more than questionable iniquity on the part of England. The waging of the war was, all through, but a ludicrous exhibition of the mastery of Anglo-Saxon art and courage over the clumsy Tartar and his stupid bigotry to custom. It was, in truth, the comic part of the drama in which the " Go ahead" temple of the West and the " Stand still" fatal ism of the East supplied the action and the stage effect. Yet out of so trivial a thing as this, came forth a portent which has since grown to be almost the intensest subject of the world s meditation. This mean war for mean it was both in motive and incident ended with a treaty by which our phi lanthropic and disinterested old kinsman John Bull stipulated for and obtained a new foothold on the soil of the Celestial Empire having procured by it, a right to establish himself in five several ports for the prosecution of his own trade. Of course, it was not long afterwards, before the diligent brother Jonathan, who always has his wits about him and never re quires much prompting when a good bargain is in view, fol lowed the example of his respectable predecessor and made a treaty of the same kind for himself. And thus it fell out that England and America contrived to secure for themselves, and all Christendom a new stand-point in those Mantchore realms which thirty centuries had isolated from Western visitation and research almost as with a wall of brass. The treaties of that day had no more apparent significance than might be said to belong to a shrewd mercantile compact. OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. the development of the world s progress we cannot but regard them as links in a chain of stupendous events, which, passing through a predestined evolution, was duly consumma ting a momentous design of Providence. Remote from this scene of action, in the opposite quarter of the globe, the next great agency in this design was disclosed in an incident of sin gular and mysterious influence. Our Mexican war broke out, and California, heretofore shut off from the populous world by rocky mountains and by savage wastes, fell from the hand of its feeble and incurious Aztec-Gothic possessor, and became the heritage of our mission-seeking and Manifest-Destiny-following American-Saxon. To our amazement, this fresh virgin land was no sooner impressed by the foot-print of its new master, than it disclosed and surrendered to his hand an ominous, world-disturbing secret, old and silent as time, of mountains loaded with gold, and rivers whose sands sparkled with treas ure in a profusion exceeding the utmost extravagance of fable or the teeming abundance of the poet s dream. And quick "as change of thought, gold, the long reputed and proverbial curse of our race, the root of all evil, is raised to the dignity of a power ordained to countless benefactions in working the grandest results upon the destiny of mankind ever yet chroni cled in human annals. It has started into life, full- armed and endowed with all the implements of civilization, a populous and powerful State. It has reared a great city upon the Pacific coast, confronting the vast hives of Asia, and its interjacent isles, and now, but some six or eight years old, crowded with an incalculable commerce and bringing together into one common mart, Christian and Heathen, " baptized and infidel," to drive onward the great wheels of Progress and sol emnize the final triumphs of a universal humanity in a new and better brotherhood of the long-estranged children of men. It has now overcome the hitherto immovable prejudice of Oriental habit, and domesticated, it is computed, some fifty thousand Chinese workmen on American soil, in a fair way to astonish the world with that strangest anomaly, that ever yet SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 295 came up out of the deep of fancied impossibilities, the actual metamorphosis of the children of the most ancient and abject Oriental despotism, into universal-suffrage Republicans, or dained, in due time, to take a hand in making Presidents, and perhaps, in building platforms if perchance, future political architects have skill to build a platform strong enough to stand. These adventurers have yielded to the beckoning lure of gold, and have set up their frail altars on a land where all altars of a false worship must surely and swiftly fall as the image of Dagon before the living God. What is quite worthy of note in this picture of the Chinese emigration, is that in that tendency to imitation which is so characteristic of their country, the emigrants, if I am truly informed, have established a newspaper certainly, a very ambitious stride of the Asiatic on the highway of Progress. We who are familiar with this volatile and parti-colored messenger of tattle and intelligence, are not apt to be struck by any peculiar significance in the fact of the issue of the little sheet of nine by fifteen inches which carries about the current rumors and stale jests of a vil lage ; but a veritable, modern, American newspaper, edited by a Chinaman, and printed on blocks, with all those pictur esque scrawls that represent a Chinese alphabet ; prepared pe riodically for the Shanghai packet, and carried over the ocean to be distributed and used by the pragmatic pigtailed descend ants of the sun and moon, is a fact of such emphasis in present history as to defy all prediction of its future influence. We can imagine how this little missive, in bearing the tid ings of the success of the emigrants, must overset a thousand long-nursed prejudices against the outside barbarians ; what a suggestive glimpse it must give to the stagnant mind of the fatherland, of the busy and prosperous world across the great sea ! We may suppose it also to tax the credulity of its readers. With some very misty efforts to explain to them the incom prehensible phenomena of a people who govern themselves, and who are not bambooed for omitting to bend to the 296 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ground before a mandarin ; and, doubtless, it does not omit to speak a favorable word, now and then, for the good-will and charity which seem, to the emigrants, to lie at the bottom of the great Christian superstition. These are seeds which the little Chinese newspaper may sow upon soil that will be found to have some elements favorable to their nurture. For thus the light and active bird performs a similar office in the physical world in diffusing a wholesome vegetation over its surface. There is still another and a more comprehensive fact than any of these the most marvellous development of all. China, throughout its vast confines, is all ablaze with revolution. Its wooden idols and its monster gods are floating, as cast off drift, upon the great river. Armies are in the field, and the troops of the old mongul dynasty are flying before a rebel host. Men have drawn the sword who combine religious fa naticism with political rage, in waging war against the ancient laws and religious traditions of the kingdom ; and the soldier, strangely animated with the zeal of an Iconoclast fights no ^less against the State than against his ancient temples and their graven deities. This bloody strife is, perhaps, even now, ended in the total subversion of a dynasty which dates back to the conquests of Genghis Kahn. In this war nothing is so prominent, so startling, and, if the proof were not before us, so incredible, as the palpable manifestation of a germ of Christianity forcing its gnawing fibres upward through a soil that has never known better nourishment than the compost of an absurd superstition and the tears of its victims. This is an outline of some of the chief incidents in that grand romance of human destiny, which is yet unfolding its plot in China and which seems to be making a sure way, through many complications, to a solemn and august catas trophe. There are great epochs in human history in which man kind seem to ascend not by gradual progression, but by im pulsive upward step from one stage of existence to a higher one, as if some secret force, long slumbering in the centre, SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 297 suddenly breaks out and lifts the whole mass of organized societies into an upper sphere. We may trace these epochs from earliest history. They are the movements of the great machinery of Providence forcing human destiny towards its appointed goal. Such, I believe, with profoundest faith, is the great power that now moves the Oriental world. With regard to other portions of the world outside of the limits of Christendom, besides those upon which I have said so much, I dismiss them with a brief reference. Their pro gress is not less worthy of remark. Examine the condition of the Polynesian group of islands, and especially the more re cent history of that island-continent, Australia ; note the re demption of the Sandwich Islands and others of the group, within the present century, from barbarism to Christianity, and their wonderful growth in civilization ; and contemplate the certainty with which all are advancing into the circle of Chris tendom, in obedience to influences that work with the steadi ness and effect of the forces of nature. I pass from this ex amination to India, and there mark the steps of its transition from an inveterate gentile towards a Christian dominion which, year by year, is widening its changeful boundaries. Then look at the movement upon the face of Africa, beginning at Algeria, in the north, transformed into a French province ; glancing onward, down the coast, note the new republics which speak our own tongue and carry our free laws and our Scripture truth into the pestilent mangrove forests of the tropic, converting them into the blest abodes of emancipated Christian men, and breaking into pieces that most unnatural and hideous of all organizations of savage life, the union of barbarism with the cupidity of commerce which finds its com modity only in its weaker fellow-savage. And thence you may proceed to the southern cape, where you will learn that our creed and language are still pursuing their conquests over the finest and most benighted of all barbarians. In this general survey of Asia and Africa, of which I have indicated only some of the principal points, as the subject of my 13* 298 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. m remarks, I cannot better impress upon your minds the extent and momentous import of the progress, than to say that this majestic march of a happier destiny already comprehends, within the scope of its influence, now more or less developed, the fate and fortunes of full four hundred millions of the sons of men long sunk in the abyss of heathen life. It seems almost to defy our power of reason to cast up truly the ac count of the issues touching the temporal and eternal happi ness of man involved in the final development of all that is to come out of this many-sided wonder. These great families, tribes and nations which have been lying, for long centuries, under the heel of a despotism that equally crushed body and soul distorting the proportions of the physical man, still more hatefully distorting his mind ; these nations, imbedded so deep in the mould of an immutable ancient polity, of such inveterate fixedness, so stamped and ingrained with the shapes and figures of the organisms of long-forgotten generations, that they were no better than breathing fossils stratified under a crust of stone ; what so dreary as this picture ? Humanity saw nothing so hopeless. There it was a world petrified within its shell, unapproachable, forbidden, insulated beyond the pale of our knowledge and our sympathy. Grand beyond conception is the movement of that central power which has heaved up the incumbent weight from the sunken world, and which is breaking the solid rib-work of its prison, and releas ing the long oppressed giant. This central power is Christi anity, and its work is only to be compared with that primordial energy of creation, when the teeming earth first disembowelled the strong creatures of life : -Now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded man-e Scarce from his mould, Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness." sprarr OF THE AGE. 299 When we contemplate this electric illumination smiting the pall of heathen darkness, and observe the spread of this new aurora as it flings its radiance to the uttermost confines of our orb, do we not perceive in it the visible manifestation of a new gospel which is opening the mind of this distant world to the promise and blessing of the old ? God has once more said, as of old, " Let there be light !" and Lo ! there is light ! I might here conclude this lecture which has already occu pied as much of your time as the customary privilege of this place allows me to ask. But now having exhibited to you the broad outline of present civilization, and the influences that are acting upon it, I beg to be indulged with a few remarks regarding the peculiar tendencies of the genius of this age and what I conceive to be its distinctive accomplishments. In asking, what is the peculiar faculty and performance of this century, I think you will agree in the answer, that it is chiefly to be noted for its acquisitions in physical science, and the success of its explorations in the domain of nature. Natural science, indeed, seems to have been almost entirely recon structed. Its modes of investigation have been improved, its philosophy strikingly and beautifully developed, and its treasury wonderfully enriched by the ingenuity and accuracy with which its collections have been analyzed and described. Novel forces have been discovered, and invention has been singularly active to improve and perfect the old mechanisms and to supply mankind with innumerable new ones of sur prising power and capability in their adaptation to the wants of society. The world may be said to go upon wheels. The chief laborer of this day, is an indefinite and endless com pound of ratchets and pinions, screws and levers, wedges and pullies eternally shifting through all manner of combinations to do all manner of conceivable work. Man, in his own status, is a mere pigmy. The wheel works for him and he stands by to touch the spring. It is curious to observe, in considering this, how much more effective is the wit of man. 300 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. than his arm : how much more solid work is done by the brain than the muscles. In laying this stress upon the accomplishment in material knowledge and skill, I do not wish to be understood as refusing to acknowledge the high claims of metaphysical science and purely intellectual improvement in the present generation. I will say of these generally that the activity of mind, the full study and the rare endowment of this age, are supremely manifested in a literature and a philosophy which have never been surpassed and which in many qualities have never been equalled. The ripeness, earnestness and industry of the scholarship of this day is a fact of singular prom inence and value, and of great significance in the estimate of the forces which have been enlisted in the cause of civ ilization. But I revert to the tendency towards physical achievement to remark in it the most conspicuous activity as the immediate agent through which the greatest impression has been made upon the visible condition of mankind. The subjugation of Nature is the work that everywhere arrests our attention in this survey. The best of mankind are busy in every field. Genius is strained to its greatest effort, emulation is excited to its highest tension. Labor has no toil, danger no terrors that are not cheerfully encountered and endured by the cham pions of this cause. Continents and oceans are explored with a brave perseverance that leaves no latitude unsought. Arctic and Antarctic seas are assailed by the hardy chivalry of science with an intrepidity that outstrips the chivalry of romance. We have proofs of this ^pressing upon our daily observa tion, in adventures that win our highest regard and warmest sympathy. There is no record of true manliness which, in my judgment, can compare with the noble self-sacrifice of the American and English navigators who have been, for years past, and are now, devoting themselves to the perilous and, I fear, hopeless enterprise to rescue the unfortunate Sir John SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 301 Franklin and his companions from the dreadful prison of the pole. In what story, ancient or modern, written to celebrate brave adventure, may you find courage and humanity so beautifully united, or danger more cheerfully embraced or generously pursued, than in that expedition which has recently left our shores under the conduct of Kane, our young country man, whose name and voice are so familiar to this audience and this Hall ? We who have heard him here explain his plan ; and heard him announce, with such eager enthusiasm and sanguine gayety of heart, the hopes that warmed his ambition, in tempting this second voyage of mercy and deliverance, and saw, in his bearing, the earnest impress of his heroic resolve, can somewhat adequately speak of the spirit that informs these undertakings. Considering his circumstances his youth, his zeal, his intelligence and his nurture, I am sure you will agree with me in the remark, that it is not the least ad mirable characteristic of the spirit of this time, that the pre vailing luxury of modern life has neither repressed the aspira tion nor enervated the faculties of the generation to whom the great duties of promoting the cause of progress have been committed. From the lap of refined life, from the warm bosom of the scholar s study, from the easy conditions of wealth which might allure ambition from its noblest aims, from these no less than from the hardy school of necessity in whose healthful training both mind and body find fit nurture for great exploits, we see the men of mould forth springing, as earnest volunteers, to court the imminent peril of these hazards, and push the conquest over nature into the dreariest and most frightful abodes ; thus gracefully exemplifying in an age of voluptuous endowment, the finest feature which adorned the chivalry of former days the union of amenities almost effeminate, with a gallantry that blanched before no danger and an endurance that yielded to no extreme. While we note these demonstrations of the spirit which an imates and directs the enterprise of this day and gives to it its 302 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. peculiar form of development, I would remark that tr%re is nothing more deserving of our notice in the exhibition of all that inventive genius which has so conspicuously promoted the general improvement, than the machinery which has been brought into use for the purposes of transportation and trans mission. I speak particularly of the adaptation of the steam er to ocean service, the multiplication of railroads, the appli cation of the telegraph to practical use, and the various im provements which have been made in the printing-press. These are hackneyed subjects of eulogy, and I do not mean to take up your time with any comment upon their value, fur ther than to say, that the introduction of these means of inter communication among nations, have in a remarkable degree destroyed the peculiarity of character belonging to tribe and race which have heretofore resisted improvement, and that they have co-operated, with singular efficacy, to bring the civ ilized world into a perception of the relations of one great fam ily. Men of every clime are growing through their agencies into better acquaintanceship with each other, and are awaking to the happy conviction of a universal humanity in which our affections, cares and duties all vibrate to the touch of a com mon nature which is mistress over all These are the best exponents I can select among many wonderful creations of art, of the true genius and faculty of the nineteenth century. They scarcely leave us any thing to desire of further means to hasten that momentous enterprise which is conducting its forces into every part of the world with the beneficent object of harmonizing and instructing all man kind. They signalize the era at which that sacred command upon which depend the eternal destinies of our race " Go forth and teach all nations," has first become a really possible and practical duty ; and they announce the certain advent of that auspicious day of the final triumph of the cross, before which the oracle of ancient prophecy has declared "every knee shall bow" and every heart do homage. These are my conceptions of the real Progress of this age. SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 303 The aVnplitude of the subject would not allow me to do more than touch upon its prominent topics those which I regard as the landmarks by which its march is to be measured. In no ting these, I could not pass over the fact that the same age which is illustrated by these noble achievements, is not with out its adverse tendencies in the study of which, I am sure, we may find much wholesome instruction. While we have seen one portion of mankind heroically pursuing the good, we have also seen others by no means feebly assailing the bul warks which protect the morals, manners and opinions that have been the truest lights to our national prosperity. In the discrimination between these two forces that work upon the fabric of society, and in the estimate to be made of the pur poses of each, you will find the moral of this lecture. It is to impress upon your minds, that in the pursuit of the knowledge of what is true progress, you must guard against being misled by the catch-words and catch-deeds that assume to expound it : that it is necessary, you should believe, notwithstanding what you may hear to the contrary, that there is some light in the experience of the past, and much darkness in the presump tion of the present ; that instinct or intention, which many claim as sufficient for human conduct, is a very dangerous guide to the individual in his own affairs, and still more dan gerous. when it is brought into public service for the direction o; the affairs of the country. They may lead a man to a bar room and teach him what to do when he gets there ; but they are not so sure to qualify him to calculate the orbit of a comet, or to solve the severe problem of governing a State. We live in a day distinguished above all others for its re sources. We have a great nation which has in its power the shaping of its own destiny. No such nation has ever existed before, none like it ever will exist again. Ours is an era and a position which culminate in the histoiy of the world. This century makes or mars the grandest fabric of human prosperity ever yet erected. To the educated energy and moral power of our people, every thing attainable by man is open and within 304: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. our reach. To a perverted energy and a false morality, with the resources of this country at their command, there is no amount of evil that may not be drawn upon our heads. Every great issue to us, as a people, is summed up in this question of Pro gress. We have to choose between the true and the false. For myself I have not only no fear, but exulting hopes, in the development. Christianity, and what is the grand result and ultimate flower of Christianity, free government and equal rights, will prevail and flourish as the perpetual heritage of a wise and just people. PEABODY INSTITUTE. 305 ADDKESS AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE PEABODY INSTITUTE. THAT man is to be envied for a great good-fortune who, having acquired wealth, has also received from nature the gift of a generous ambition which persuades him to make his wealth the hand-maiden of an honorable fame. There are but few men, among those educated to any appreciation of intellec tual excellence, who do not sometimes dally with the thought of leaving some memorial behind them by which they may secure more or less of a kind memory after they are gone. It is the instinctive utterance of the nobleness of our nature that whispers, even to the humblest of us, the desire to be remembered when we are absent. I have seldom ascended to the belfry of a village church that I did not find initials carved on the wood, or names scrawled in pencil on the wall to solicit my notice to the fact that some casual visitor who had arrived there before me desired my approbation of his own exploit in having attained to such an elevation. Many work in the spirit of pure selfish ness to set their insignificant egotisms before the eyes of pos terity ; but many work with an equally pure unselfishness to confer a benefaction, desirous that the deed alone shall live, and conscious of a pleasure in the thought that a good work shall survive to show a future generation that it had a benefactor in the past. Such men use the faculty God has given them for the improvement of the world, according to their means ; if they can do no more than plant a tree by the road-side, or open a fountain for the thirsty wayfarer, or remove a stone from his path. These are the natural aspirations of our human- 306 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ity towards a posthumous life : the longing of the spirit to live in companionship with the generations that succeed the present. How full are our lives of good intentions ! How fe% of us have the nerve, the industry and the zeal to carry these inten tion into good deeds ! We dream of things we might do, resolve to do them, halt before every shadow of obstruction, and find; when our race is run, that procrastination has eaten out the heart of enterprise. There are many men of generous disposi tion, of intelligent perception and estimate of the needs of the society to which they belong, of ample means and honest incli nation to use them in some signal scheme of social advantage, who, having lived through their whole compass of active life in daily postponements till to-morrow, take refuge, at last, against the reproaches of their conscience, in a testamentary injunction to their heirs to do what they have so long neglected. There are others, whom a kind Providence sometimes sends to bless our race both as an aid and an example to support and encourage our struggle towards a more perfect life, who are so wise to discern the necessities of humanity, so gifted with the means to supply them, and, at the same time, so hap pily endowed with a sense of the luxury of indulging in acts of well doing, that they seem to be favored with a special mis sion to scatter blessings in the pathway of their own genera tion, and to sow the seeds of a perpetual harvest of good fruits for the generations to come. We are assembled to day to dedicate to the public use the work of a man who holds, by the universal verdict of his coun try, a pre-eminent position in that rare and happy company : a man who is not content to die and leave behind him an inventory of frustrated intentions, nor to allow his heirs to deprive him of the first enjoyment of the pleasure of that good- giving and good-doing which had become the habit and the necessity of his nature. I account it to be our good-fortune to-day that, by an au spicious coincidence, the ceremonies of this inauguration are to be illustrated and hereafter to be rendered more memorable, by PEABODY INSTITUTE. 307 the actual presence and participation of our patron and friend. It is my privilege, in performing the duty assigned to me, to begin it by presenting to you Mr. George Peabody, here upon this stage and in this his own hall, to pledge him your hearty welcome. In the loud plaudits of this greeting ; in the kindly eloquence of these eyes, and in the warm beatings of these hearts, he will hear and see and feel a true counterpart and reflection of the general welcome of our whole community. His return to his own country, and more particularly his visit to Baltimore, we can all assure him, has brought our city a cheerful theme for every fireside, an honest "God speed you, good friend !" to every sober lip. In the month of February, 1857, Mr. Peabody announced to this community, through a letter, bearing date on the i2th of that month, addressed to twenty-five of his friends, whom he desired to act as trustees, the plan of an Institute which it was his wish to establish in this city, in pursuance, as he said, of a purpose he had long entertained, and which, he hoped, might "become useful towards the improvement of the moral and in tellectual culture of the inhabitants of Baltimore and collater ally to those of the State ; and also towards the enlargement and diffusion of a taste for the Fine Arts." In another part of the same letter, he gives utterance to an aspiration, which briefly but significantly expresses the benevolent scope of his project and his confidence in its success, that it might be found, "both in the influence of its example, and in the direct administration of its purpose, a long, fruitful and prosperous benefaction to the good people of Baltimore." It is more than nine years since that generous message was delivered at our doors ; and it is only now that the enterprise, which it so hopefully described, has come to this the first stage * of its development for public presentation. The project has made but slow progress through the greater part of that nine 308 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. years ; it has halted in weary delay and lingered in a sad si lence. In that interval mournful changes have come, both in the internal construction of the Board of Trustees, and in the outward public conditions which were necessary to be regard ed in the prosecution of the labor confided to them. Six of the original members of the Board have disappeared in obe dience to that irreversible command which will come, in due time, to each and all who are left to do the work of to-day. The vacant chairs have been filled ; but, among the survivors, sep arations, scarcely less solemn then those made by death, have prevented free and cordial counsel ; and, indeed, our whole community, during more than half of this interval, has lived in such feverish contests of opposing tempers, opinions and inter ests, as to render hopeless the benign works of peaceful enter prise. The long agony, I trust, is over, and a better day has come at last. The strife of five years steeped in the carnage and des olation of a civil war of such bitterness as history never before recorded bellum plusquam civile has come to an end x , and the frightened propriety of national and social life is creeping back to the old homesteads, and all good men and women are pray ing, once more, for union and harmony. Let us cheer our selves with the hope that this new peace is a true herald of good to come, and that it brings its heavenly gift of healing on its wings. It is in this first breathing space after the dreadful shc.ck of arms, that we have invited our fellow-citizens to partake in the celebration of the opening of the Institute, and to add a new pleasure to the happy change in our public affairs, by the dedication of this house and an exposition of the beneficence of an establishment whose teachings we may hope, shall for ever be devoted to the promotion of the happiness and grand eur of our country. The annals of Baltimore, ever since Baltimore could boast the honors of a city, exhibit no act of private munificence, no act, I might say, of associated philanthropy, nor perhaps PEABODY INSTITUTE. 309 of public official benefaction, which, in the scope of its design of usefulness to the community, or in the prodigal generosity of the means contributed to its accomplishment, may claim the admiration and gratitude of our citizens by a merit so clear and unquestionable as the Institute which George Peabody this day offers to the city. An endowment, amounting to half a million of dollars, has already been appropriated to the establishment and partial completion of a broad and perma nent structure of public education which, when brought to its full development, is destined to become the well-spring of a perennial and profuse bounty to many generations of the peo ple of Baltimore and Maryland. The stately edifice in which we are now assembled is but the first flower of this noble design. A great part of the work is not yet even begun. When the whole is finished, the In stitute will stand in this apex of the city, the fairest of the buildings that adorn its triple hills. Here, in the centre of the most beautiful of city landscapes, its majestic figure, reposing at the foot of that matchless column which symbolizes the im mortality of the Father of our Union, it will be the second ob ject to challenge the admiration of the passing stranger ; while it will ever attract the veneration and gratitude of our own peo ple and the thousands of their descendants, who, through the lapse of years, shall be privileged to frequent its halls and draw from its wells of living water exhaustless draughts of wis dom and virtue. Still more distinctly will it stand a cherished monument to perpetuate in the affection of our posterity the enviable memory of a patriot who served his country with im perial munificence. Let me add, it will stand for ages as the memorial of a good man whom Providence had blessed with a prosperity almost as lavish as his virtue ; with a renown al most as rare as his wise appreciation of the true use of riches. The idea, partially developed in the growth of the Insti tute up to its present stage, of a plan of popular instruction which should embrace every thing most useful in science and most attractive in art, I have already intimated, had been, for 310 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. some time, before the public announcement of it, a favorite con ception of its author. I shall have occasion presently to no tice the various objects contemplated in this organization and to indicate the agencies by which they are to be brought into active service for the benefit of the public. I may, in a gen eral reference to the scope of the whole scheme, say that it has an aim and magnitude no less generous than to .establish, with in the pale of a perpetual corporate authority, an organization of material power and intellectual resource adapted and direct ed to the indoctrination of the community and by that word, I mean not the community of this city and State only, but of our country in the learning, morals, arts, taste, accomplish ment and skill that lift up nations to the height of the most vir tuous and elegant as well as the most powerful civilization. I think I should best designate this scheme according to its true character, if I should call it a design to establish a Uni versity adapted to the conditions indispensable to the cultiva tion of a taste for science and letters in the adult population of a large city. It will not conform to the common concep tion of a University, which is supposed to consist of an aggre gate of colleges, professorships and scholars systematically employed in a regular career of teaching and study according to a prescribed usage and formula : but it may claim the charac ter of an organized corporation whose means are to be employ ed in affording opportunities for the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge attainable by the teachings of books, the expositions of learned men and the study of artistic design. We propose to begin where the ordinary college known to our traditional systems of education terminates its instruction. It is not our purpose, except under some favorable conditions which I shall hereafter notice, to attempt a regular routine of study through which to conduct our classes in an annual circuit. All that belongs to preliminary or elemental education, we sup pose, for the most part, to be done before our student comes to us ; or, if not done, that it has been pretermitted, either for want of opportunity or means, or inclination, and that he comes PEABODY INSTITUTE. 311 to our Institute to be instructed in whatever he has the leisure to acquire, or the ambition to pursue, and which we are able and have* appointed to teach. The world of science, or, to use Mr. Carlyle s more home ly and more comprehensive phrase, the world of things " know- able" has grown very wide and infinitely various in this nine teenth century. We have, for some time past, been obliged to relinquish the conceit of attaining to that universal knowledge, which so much excited the imagination and the industry of our ancestors. We are driven to the study of Summaries, Reviews and En cyclopaedias for our general information, and of special Sciences or select Literature for our distinctive personal pursuits. The library of any one language in Christendom is more than a life time labor can explore; and the daily profusion of the press in productions of the highest genius and most valuable knowledge throws the most ambitious bookworm into blank despair when he attempts to keep himself abreast with the march of intellect, as marked out by the army of his contemporaries. We are, therefore, as I have said, driven to choose for ourselves special studies, and to pursue them with what means are at hand and within our reach. If we can read a good book which we are sure will teach us the best that is known on its subject ; if we can hear a good course of lectures from an authentic teacher who will place us au courant with the accepted and approved notions and facts of the time, we do as much as we can hope to do, and we satisfy ourselves with the thought that we are doing our duty, and are elevating the general estimate of ed ucation in the society to which we belong. Now, it is to furnish these opportunities for various study and to familiarize science, letters and art to the perception of the community to give a good chance to all who desire to know more and better things than they knew before, and to excite and feed a love of knowledge and study in the heart of the country, by supplying the means of intellectual culture, that our University, modelled on this new idea of miscellaneous 312 OCCASIONAL ADDKESSES. supply adapted to the various tastes and pursuits of the peo ple, is established. The general character or outline of our plan has been giv en to the world in Mr. Peabody s letter of the 1 2th of Febru ary, 1857, to which I have referred. Without repeating what is described in that letter as the instructions to the Trustees, I shall, as briefly as I can, endeavor to explain the purpose con templated by the organization which is there directed to be made of the Institute. The instruction supplied by the Institute is designed to be communicated through four departments of administration : A LIBRARY ; A SCHOOL OF LECTURES ; AN ACADEMY OF Music ; A GALLERY OF ART. The prominent and fundamental characteristic of this or ganization is its adaptation to the diffusion of knowledge, through the voluntary application of such portions of the com munity as may be inclined to seek it. It is the aim of the founder of the Institute to put the volunteer student in posses sion of every facility to aid his studies in whatever department of letters or science his inclination or his interest may lead him to choose. These advantages, it is also the purpose of the founder, to confer upon the student, in great part, without charge or expense, or, at most, at a rate of expense no higher than may be necessary to prevent improper intrusion and se cure good order and decorum. In the general review of these divisions of the Institute, we are first brought to notice THE LIBRARY. This constitutes the most prominent object in the construc tion of the Institute, exhibiting to the eye, even at the present time, in its early stage of accumulation, a very attractive col lection of valuable works. The selection of these volumes, now amounting to some fifteen thousand, has been diligently pursued by the Board of Trustees during the last five years, PEABODY INSTITUTE. 313 through all the difficulties and obstructions thrown in their way by the unhappy condition of the public affairs, by the very unfavorable rates of foreign exchange, and by the burdensome restrictions of a high system of domestic taxation. The prices of books, from these causes have been so much increased, that it became a matter of obvious necessity and discretion to make our purchases as small as the object we had in view would al low. What we have achieved, therefore, in this enterprise, may, perhaps, be entitled to the commendation of a prudent industry, and should at least save the Board from some of that censure which an impatient public or certain inconsiderate critics of our labor have occasionally indulged. The scope of the collection to which the Board in now di recting its attention covers a catalogue of fifty thousand vol umes, which will complete what may be described as the first section or instalment of the Library. This section is intended to exhibit an aggregate of science and literature as these are illustrated by the most eminent and authentic writers whose works are best known and most generally accepted at the present time. It is, in a restricted sense, designed to be com plete in itself. I mean by this, that this section will embrace, as far as it is capable of doing so, the entire circle of science, art and letters, as known to the philosophy and literature of this age, comprehending in its compass what is understood as the standard works on all subjects, and those productions in the field of general literature which have come, by the suf frage of scholars, to be distinguished as classics. When this division is finished upon the plan I have de scribed, a second section will be undertaken and a digested catalogue be prepared as a guide to the purchase. This section will be an amplification of the first, bringing in many valuable works in the same departments of science and literature, supplementing that first collection by Trea tises, Histories and Philosophies gathered from the stores of other nations, and enriching our collections by the learning and labor of past ages ; thus giving the materials for a survey 14 314: OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. of the growth and progress of learning in its career towards its present development. A third section will be specially directed to the rare and curious products of scholarship, and to the miscellaneous treasures which opportunity, chance and the luxury of our ever teeming and busy press, throw in the way of the In stitute. You will perceive from this sketch of the plan of the Library, that many years must elapse before it may be ex pected to reach the dimensions and character we have assign ed to it. A yearly appropriation will be indispensable, not only to make up the complement of the present requisitions which our catalogue demands, but also to furnish, what will always be more in request, and perhaps more intrinsically useful, the constantly increasing volume of contemporary literature and science. The Library is the natural appurtenance to the Lecture- Room, and from which it will derive its most assiduous stu dents. Our second department, therefore, presents to us a very prominent organization of a system of instruction by THE SCHOOL OF LECTURES. From the earliest times in the annals of public education down to the present day, teaching by Lectures has been re garded as the most attractive and efficient means of impress ing upon the mind of the student the facts and principles of almost every kind of knowledge. In the scheme of the In stitute we give it the place of our first and most active agen^- cy, and we regard our arrangement and provision for various courses of periodical lectures as the basis of the most useful and popular service of the Institute. Through the orderly and permanent ministration of this department every science may be taught, not only to the ex tent of its adaptation to the popular comprehension, but also to such zealous students as may seek it, even up to its most recondite conditions. In this theatre, if the hopes of the PEABODY INSTITUTE. 315 founder be realized, there will be supplies, at various seasons as opportunity may offer, of masterly expositions of all the chief subjects of human knowledge which constitutes the in tellectual wealth of our country. It will be our aim, in the first place, to establish certain se lect courses of lectures on the most useful sciences and arts, which shall be prosecuted through a defined series extending over one or more seasons, and which shall be adapted, as near ly as the disposition of our students may enable us to do so, to a prescribed circle of studies, upon the accomplishment of which we may be able to confer a diploma. The lectures of this class will, I hope, be specially devoted to the education of the more ambitious and studious of our people, and particularly of those arriving on the verge of man hood, who desire to excel in that kind of knowledge which may be turned to good account not only for the student, but also for the service of society. The principal topics of these lectures would be Geometry and Mathematics, Architecture and Design, Chemistry, Engineering, Technology and Mechan ics, and other sciences of the same practical character. In this course there would be little of what is generally un derstood to be popular lecturing. It would be a course, rath er, of grave study, which we hope would rouse the emulation of young men who desire to qualify themselves for the impor tant and profitable duties that belong to the practice of what may be called the scientific professions of civil life. I should like to see this course of lectures established as a fundamental purpose of the Institute, and so commended to the communi ty by its useful results as to ensure a regular and persistent at tendance on one or two nights of every week, through the ap pointed season of each year, of a large class who would enter the course with a resolution to pursue their studies to the end, and to earn the diploma of the Institute. For the supply of lectures of this kind our country furnish es abundant material ; and even if we should find an occa sional difficulty in procuring a competent teacher ready to meet 316 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. our demands with an original stock of lectures, we should still be able to obtain from our own library the most approved and valuable tracts which, in the hands of practised readers, would fulfil all the requisitions of the course. Indeed, I am satisfied that in well selected readings adapted to the conditions of our forum, and the needs of our audiences, we may always be able to make an evening in our lecture-room one of the most useful and attractive resorts of the city. Apart from this regular circle or series of Jectures to be re peated every year, we propose to organize a continuous exhi bition of lectures of another kind, which, to the general public and especially to our older population and more educated classes, will be much more interesting, and to them perhaps more instructive. In this department of the plan, we propose to obtain from the very highest sources which our means and the opportunity of the time may enable us to command, a continuous supply of lectures which shall range over the whole field of literature and science, and which shall present to the frequenters of this hall every attraction that may be found in the discourse of em inent teachers who have made their several themes a special study, and who can bring to their exposition of them the ad vantages of careful and skilful preparation. These lectures will be given in courses of various extent : some of ten or twelve some of half that number many, perhaps, where the subject is of limited scope, may be given in a single lecture. In this field our lectures will, by turns, bring us through the circuit of the physical sciences astronomy, geology, nat ural history, the varieties and conditions of animal life ; in short, all the divisions of that material world whose forms and qualities are open to the scrutiny of human observation. Here will be taught the history of our race, the nature and destiny of man, the theories of his moral sentiment, his obligations and duties, the jurisprudence of nations, forms of government. I should fatigue your attention by the attempt to give even an outline of the diversity of topics which may be illustrated here. PEABODY INSTITUTE. 317 It is only necessary to say that the lecture is a means of in struction as boundless in its scope as human speech, and is certainly the most popular of all the agencies employed in im parting knowledge. The several lectures of every season will be arranged some months in advance of their delivery, and the lecturers will, where that is practicable, be engaged, and the period of their engagement be designated, sufficiently long before the opening of the season to allow an extensive notice of the ar rangement to be communicated to the public, in order that those who desire to attend may be apprised in time to prepare for it. At present, the funds which we are able to appropriate to the Lectures, are much less than the demands of this depart ment, administered to the full extent of our plan, require. In my estimate of the requisitions of that plan perhaps I may overstate them we should not be able to give the full courses we contemplate, and enlist the talent necessary to make these courses efficient, at an outlay of less than seven or eight thousand dollars a year. Whether our means shall ever enable us to appropriate that sum remains for the devel opment of the future but, in the mean time, we may do much with what we have. I have intimated, in speaking of our Lectures, that we might supplement an occasional deficiency by readings. I attach no little value to this resource as a means of giving popularity to the Institute. I think we should do well to introduce this practice of occasional readings into more gener al use. There must necessarily be many vacant or unoccu pied periods during the season, in the intervals between our appointed lectures. Now, I wish that no week between No vember and April should pass over, in any year, without hav ing this hall opened at least two nights. It is indispensable, in my judgment, to the good standing of the Institute in the popular regard, that there should be a constant attendance in the Library and the Lecture-Room, and an ever-present mo- 318 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. tive offered to the public to take an interest in its operations. The practice of reading well-selected Treatises, Essays, Crit icisms, and interesting scientific or literary discourses, in the intervals of the Lectures, if committed to scholars qualified for this task, would, I am sure, very soon win the favor of the community by the varied and easy means it would be found to supply towards an acquaintance with the master-pieces of the literature and of the most valuable science of our language. THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC. The third department of the Institute is the Academy of Music. This exists as yet only in expectancy. The building necessary to this department is not begun. It was a favorite thought in the conception of our good friend, Mr. Peabody, this of bringing to the aid of the great purposes of his Institute the bland and refining influences of that art which has been called the humanizer of the possessor of all other arts. Here music, I am inclined to say, has for the first time in our country been brought into a system of education, as a co-ordinate element to hold an equal rank with the other teachings of the University. I believe, in no other institution of note among us has music been assigned a seat in such alliance with philosophy. It is reviving the thought and practice of classic Greece, and carries us back to the Re public of Plato and the Academy of Athens. Let us hope and pray that the benign inspiration of our Founder may fill the heart of this community, and make the Academy of Mu sic all that he expects. This Academy is as yet, of course, but scantily developed in our plan. So far as the letter of Mr. Peabody discloses the plan it is intended to be composed of a special member ship, which will form something of a separate corporate or ganization within that of the Institute. This will consist of a large aggregate of subscribers enlisted from the musical talent of our city, and all others of both sexes, who take an in terest in the cultivation of music. They will be supplied by PEABODY INSTITUTE. 319 the Institute with an appropriately-furnished saloon, which will be the appendage to a concert-room, adapted to public ex hibition ; and in this saloon will be collected a Library of Mu sic, with musical instruments, and all the adjuncts necessary to the useful intercourse and professional occupation of the members. This saloon will be a familiar and daily place of business, and within its walls will be devised and arranged the management and service of the Academy. The Concert Hall, which we hope will be of the most ample and approved construction, should be supplied with an organ and the proper accompaniments for the exhibition of the high est art in music. It will be a prime object in the scheme of this Academy to make it the means of impressing upon the community of Baltimore the value of introducing into the Pub lic Schools a system of instruction in music through all its most scientific grades, as a branch of the education conferred upon their pupils, in order that the latent talent of our popula tion may be brought out and cultivated as a resource of per sonal advancement to its possessors, and of public benefit to the city. How these ends shall be best accomplished will be the subject of the peculiar study and design of the Academy after it is organized. At present we can only speak conject- urally of the extent to which this department may be usefully developed. THE GALLERY OF ART. The fourth and last of the departments is a Gallery of Art. This, like the Academy of Music, is yet unprovided for. It will require extensive room in the building, and an effective or ganization, which must be obtained, in great part, from those who may be connected with its operations. The general purpose of this Gallery is to promote the study of Painting and Sculpture and of their kindred Arts of Design, and to train the public taste to a true appreciation of the value of that artistic skill which has won the admiration of mankind from the earliest ages of civilization, and the full rec- 320 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. ognition of which has come to be one of the most authentic tests of the refinement of nations in our own day. We indulge the hope that it will not be long before our city, through the agency of this department of the Institute, shall become the resort of the most distinguished artists of our country, who will here be furnished with every aid towards the prosecution of their several studies, that their most ambitious votary could desire. That we shall be able to delight and in struct our community by public exhibitions of painting and sculpture from the hands of our own gifted artists, whose num bers already have given them importance as an influential class in our society, and whose merits have brought them a fame that assigns them an honorable place beside the most distinguished of their fraternity in Europe. In this Gallery will be placed the best specimens of art at tainable from the collections of the works of the older masters, and will, as far as the means and the opportunities of the Board of Trustees may permit, be enriched with the most ad mired works of the artists of the present day, and especially of those of our own land. The formation of such a Gallery as I have described, you will perceive, is necessarily the work of time. It can only grow by slow accretion. But every year, we may hope, will add to its treasures ; and, being once securely established on a per manent foundation, it will, doubtless, become the depository of occasional private contributions, conferred by bequest or given by the friends of art who may be animated by something of the spirit that makes the founder of the Institute the sub ject of the grateful affection of his country. I have given you in this review an outline of the Institute as designed by its author. It is sufficient to show you how comprehensive is the scheme, how various will be its purposes when it is completed and brought into full activity, and how useful, how bountiful in good results, how influential in form ing the character of our community it may become if diligent ly, faithfully and intelligently administered. You will note PEABODY INSTITUTE. 321 that I have designated it as a University. I think you will perceive in the description I have given you, such ample breadth and variety of faculty in the scheme, as to convince you that it only depends upon the fidelity of its management to make it the most extensive and probably the most eminent theatre of popular instruction in our country. And, indeed, it is not at all out of the circle of future contingencies, and certainly not incompatible with the plans I have disclosed, that this, our University, should be brought into some distin guished and useful connection with the whole educational sys tem of the State. Mr. Peabody has already created one link at the lower end of the chain of public education, by which the Institute is bound to the Primary Schools of that system, in the provision and dis tribution of yearly prizes to the pupils who win the title to these rewards. There is nothing to prevent us from uniting with the State to forge another link at the upper end of that chain, by which the Institute may be brought into an honorary connection with the public Colleges and the State University on such terms as would entitle it to offer the privileges of its lectures and library, in some special form, as a reward of mer it to the highest scholarship which these institutions should produce. I will not weary your patience with further comment on the plan of this great project of popular education which we are now assembled to inaugurate. We hope in the regular and diligent administration of its duties, from this time forth, to familiarize its design to your perception and to commend it to your good opinion by the service it may render the communi ty. It is sufficient for me to say to you at this time that the Trustees have resolved to proceed in their work as efficiently and as rapidly as the means at their command will enable them to do. The Library is under a regular progress of construction, and will, after the present large fund for its establishment is ex hausted, be continuously increased by a yearly appropriation 14* OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. proportioned to the amounts required in the general service of the Institute and the means at the disposal of the Trustees. The Lectures will be expanded and varied under the same conditions of expenditure. The Academy of Music and the Gallery of Art will await, at least for their complete organization, the erection of the buildings necessary to their accommodation. It is proper, before I conclude, that I should say a few words in reference to the government of the Institute. The public have long been aware that the original plan of management, as set forth in Mr. Peabody s letter of the i2th of February, 1857, contemplated a mixed government, in which the duty of organization and supervision was given to the Board of Trustees, and that of administration was intended to be offered to the Maryland Historical Society, of which Mr. Peabody was a distinguished member. Upon the fact being communicated to the public, that this duty of administration would, when the Institute was organ ized and ready to assume its functions, be tendered to the His torical Society, that body with a most generous alacrity took an early occasion to express its hearty concurrence in Mr. Peabody s wishes, and to assure him, in anticipation of the offer, that, when the time should arrive for asking their co-op eration, they would most cheerfully undertake the duties he as signed to them. Years, after this, elapsed. The building, as it now stands, was erected in the midst of that unhappy depression brought upon us by the late civil war. It presents scarcely one-half of the structure required for the full accommodation of the In stitute. This whole house, it is found, will be engrossed by the. Lecture Hall, and the apartments indispensable to the Li brary. Indeed, it is now quite apparent that the Library must ultimately be transferred to the new section of the Institute hereafter to be constructed, after which the present Library rooms may be appropriated to other departments. In this long delay that has befallen our enterprise a de- PEAJ30DY INSTITUTE. 323 lay which the circumstances I have alluded to made inevitable we have, at least, found some profitable experience. It has given time for reflection upon the practicability of that double system of government prescribed for the Institute in the letter. Old friends of Mr. Peabody had fallen away in that interval, both from the Historical Society and from the Board of Trus tees. The Society had undergone many other mutations in its membership. It grew up to number, nominally, as many as four hundred, and fell off again to perhaps half that number. With an organization that set no limit to its increase, there was an ebb and flow in its composition which proved it to be sin gularly variable and unstable. This peculiarity in its con struction presented to some of its own members, as it did to the Trustees and to the founder, some reason to question the practi cability of a long and prosperous management of the Institute by an association so liable to change of agents, and so exposed to the risk of diversity of view and policy. They apprehended danger from this constitutional instability in the membership. This danger, though not imminent, and, indeed, not at all to be regarded as probable from those who now control the So ciety and especially while the founder s personal friends were still active and influential in that association was, neverthe less, one that in the long future before us, there was obvious reason to fear would often present itself to embarrass and ob struct the orderly and systematic operation of a scheme so com plex and exacting in its demands, and requiring such regulari ty and stability in its course, as that of the Institute. The du ties it tendered to the Society, I may also remark, were of a most onerous character and in no respect assimilated to the appropriate and natural functions of that body. Weighing all these considerations, it occurred to the Trus tees and to Mr. Peabody and, doubtless, it occurred also to many members of the Society that before the Institute was presented to the public, it would be a wise measure on the part of both bodies, to rescind, by common consent, the ar rangement of the double administration a measure which, at 324 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. that stage in the progress of the Institute, was within the easy control of the parties interested. It was only necessary for the founder to express his wish on this subject to the Society, with a request that it would decline the duty to which he had invited it. This was done very recently in a kind letter addressed by Mr. Peabody to that body, asking, as a favor to himself, that it would relinquish a purpose which it had only consented to perform from its respect and regard for him. The action of the Society on this letter was prompt, gra cious and most honorable to its esteem for the author. The acceptance of the anticipated duties was recalled and the His torical Society lost no time to communicate its proceedings to the Board of Trustees. By this event the future management of the Institute in all its details has fallen into the hands of the Trustees, who are now alone responsible for the administration as well as the or ganization of the whole plan. I have now said all that I think necessary on the present occasion, touching the nature and history of the enterprise of founding this Institute. I shall therefore hasten to a conclu sion with a few remarks upon the spirit in which our friend and patron desires this work of his to be conducted. I cannot do this better than by presenting to you his letter of the 1 2th of February, 1857, and reading from it his own explanation of the ends he hoped to accomplish by this munifi cent gift. You will listen to words full of good thoughts and earnest patriotism words which I pray may be always read by the people of Baltimore not only with the affection due to their most honored benefactor, but also with the reverence due to a wise and virtuous teacher. In the concluding passage of the letter Mr. Peabody says to the Trustees : " These, gentlemen, are the general instructions I have to impart to you, for your guidance in the laborious duties I have committed to your care. You will perceive that my design is PEABODY INSTITUTE. 325 to establish an Institute which shall in some degree adminis ter to the benefits of every portion of the city of Baltimore : which shall supply the means of pursuing the acquirement of knowledge and the study of art to every emulous student of either sex, who may be impelled by the laudable desire of im provement to seek it ; which shall furnish incentives to the ambition of meritorious youth in the Public Schools, and in that useful School of Design, under the charge of the Me chanics Institute, by providing for those who excel, a reward which, I hope, will be found to be not only a token of honor ary distinction, but also a timely contribution towards the means of the worthy candidate who shall win it, for the com mencement of a successful career in life : which shall afford opportunity to those whom fortune has blessed with leisure, to cultivate those kindly and liberalizing arts that embellish the character by improving the perception of the beautiful and the true, and which, by habituating the mind to the contemplation of the best works of genius, render it more friendly and gen erous towards the success of deserving artists in their early endeavors after fame." He adds " I must not omit to impress upon you a suggestion for the government of the Institute, which I deem to be of the highest moment, and which I desire shall be ever present to the view of the Board of Trustees. My earnest wish to promote at all times a spirit of harmony and good-will in society, my aversion to intolerance, bigotry and party ran cor, and my enduring respect and love for the happy insti tutions of our prosperous Republic, impel me to express the wish that the Institute I have proposed to you shall always be strictly guarded against the possibility of being made a theatre for the dissemination or discussion of sectarian theology or party politics ; that it shall never minister in any manner whatever to political dissension, to infidelity, to visionary theories of a pretended philosophy which may be aimed at the subversion of the approved morals of society, that it shall never OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. lend its aid or influence to the propagation of opinions tending to create or encourage sectional jealousies in our happy country, or which may lead to the alienation of the people of one State or section of the Union from those of another. But that it shall be so conducted throughout its whole career, as to teach political and religious charity, toleration and beneficence and prove itself to be in all contingencies and conditions, the true friend of our inestimable Union, of the salutary institutions of free government, and of liberty regulated by law. I enjoin these precepts upon the Board of Trustees and their successors forever, for their invariable observance and enforcement in the administration of the duties I have confided to them." This is our friend s exposition of the great objects contem plated by him in the establishment of the Institute. We have his purpose and his advice from his own lips. These are put upon record to be preserved and handed down from the fathers of this day to their children as an inheritance which, wisely used, will grow to be the richest among the treasures of the city. This munificent endowment we cannot err in saying is one of those good thoughts which our religious insight, no less than the most venerable experiences of history, teaches us are often planted by a bountiful Providence, as blessed seed in a fertile mind, that they may germinate and grow up to maturity and bear fruit for the wholesome nurture of generations of mankind. To my comprehension of it which is warmed and colored by my long acquaintance with its author and my admiration of the perfect honesty and truth of his nature the grandeur of this gift is enhanced and even consecrated by the quiet, unos tentatious and sincere benevolence of the giver, in whose com position generosity is so spontaneous and pervasive that the benefactor is almost unconscious of the affluence of his own bounty. There are great charities sometimes made by men in their lifetime, of such magnitude and so nobly inspired by love of country, as to become heroic and to live in the memory of mankind as landmarks in a country s history. These, even PEABODY INSTITUTE. 327 as single deeds, are very rare. George Peabody s name will stand conspicuous on national records for manifold acts of matchless beneficence which the people of two great empires will never forget. I have now performed the duty assigned to me in this cer emony of inauguration. I have given you the history of the Institute and endeavored to describe its organization, as well as to indicate what we hope will be its future career. The gratitude of the people of Baltimore who may here after find instruction and pleasure in frequenting these halls, I trust will long have reason to commemorate the i2th of Feb ruary, in every coming year, as a festival anniversary to render appropriate honors to the name of George Peabody. And here I end my task by presenting this Institute to the public use and enjoyment of the community of Baltimore, as an offering made to the city by one of the most generous, be nevolent and earnest men of his age. LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ON THE REBELLION. A WOKD TO THE KEADEE. THESE letters of Mr. Paul Ambrose were written at in tervals, as their dates will show, from the close of the second year of the Civil War down to the restoration of peace after the surrender of Lee. They were addressed to the au thor s old friend, Mr. Seaton, of the National Intelligencer, and, with the exception of the last, were published in that paper. The topics they bring into discussion are those suggested by the principles and incidents of the rebellion as these rose to view in the rapid transit of events. In the study of these topics the reader will not fail to remark how gradually and sharply the destined plot of this great drama was developed, from day to day, in the progress of what we might call the ri pening of a wonderful revolution in the political and social character of the nation. Mr. Ambrose has endeavored to explore the secret mo tives which impelled a class of politicians in the South, not without some effective cooperation from auxiliaries both in the North and West, to contrive the overthrow of the Union. He has also brought into review the most popular and au thoritative assumptions of that political philosophy which may be said to be endemic in the South, and which has had such signal influence in swajting the mind of that region towards the unconscious but certain establishment of perpetual war between the States ; for nothing is more fixed in the fate of 332 A WORD TO THE READER. nations than the impossibility of peace under conflicting sov ereignties. In the four years of desperate struggle that have gone by, the whole country has remarked how strangely each stroke of war smote the mind of the people with a new conception of the issue to which they were giving their strength. Each year brought a new phase to the conflict, every month unexpected change in its direction, new interpretation of its mysteries, stronger conviction of the power that shaped it course. Now that the strife has come to an end, and we can look calmly over the wreck of the war and see how much the tem pest of its wrath has destroyed, and how much it has regener ated and reformed, we are struck with amazement at the mag nitude of the achievement : we acknowledge it to be far above all human premeditation ; far beyond the reach of unassisted human agencies. We see in this consummation, the myste rious grandeur of an old Scriptural Prophecy or Proclamation of a Divine command ; and we contemplate the end at which we have arrived with the awe and reverence due to the great est and most memorable era, except one, that finds a record in human annals, the Era of the Emancipation of four millions of Slaves, and the Extirpation of African slavery forever. The Curse of Ages has been lifted from two continents. Slavery has disappeared everywhere within our borders, and begins to day to perish in Africa, to wither in Brazil, and all South America. The war has struck the blow that makes it hence forth incapable of life, beyond the present century, in any part of the world. Every thing that may serve to note the history of such an era, has a value that makes it worth preservation. It is chief ly on this score that Mr. Ambrose has authorized the collec tion of these Letters in the present volume. But what had more force in bringing him to this conclusion, was the persua sion which led him to believe that, being written in the kind est spirit of old friendship, and, in great part, with a special A WOKD TO THE READER. 333 view to the restoration of good-will South of the line , they might do some service, if brought to the perusal of certain of our " Southern brethren" who have unwittingly, against all their antecedents, got strangely out of place in this quarrel. And it was added to this suggestion, that other of these brethren, of a more inveterate stamp, might, perhaps, experience a wholesome influence in turning over these pages, if it were only for the opportunity it would furnish them for a review of their old teachings and traditional conceits touching govern ment, which they had learned from the schools, and which had apparently so much to do in getting up this singularly miscalculated rebellion of theirs. Now, to both of these classes of thinkers, these Letters should they fail to convince those to whom they are tendered that they have fallen into error in regard to certain favorite dogmas will, at least, offer a modest plea for the recon sideration of opinions which are now popularly claimed to be settled by the war, but which, I think, judicious per sons would say, had much better be settled, if that be practi cable, by argument and honest conviction. To bring this about would certainly be a point gained of inestimable value to the future peace and cordial intent of the country. Mere conquest is but a hollow peacemaker : it leaves the bitter root still in the ground. To pluck that out by the force of a true and manly judgment, instead of leaving it to die under the slow decay of time, will go far to turn our ca lamity into a blessing. We have many points yet to settle, which will require all the wisdom and all the good temper on both sides, which the war has left us. In these pending and coming questions the South has a much nearer and more sensitive interest than the North. Let me give the men of that section a word of kind advice, in exhorting them to face their fortunes with an equal mind, to anticipate the predestined course of events, and to outrun the hopes of the country by ready and cheer- 334 A WORD TO THE READER. ful provision for the inevitable future. They have come to the threshold of a new nationality : let them cross it like a wise generation, with a brave confiding step, and they will live to rejoice in a new prosperity, more permanent and hap pier than the old. JOHN P. KENNEDY. BALTIMOKE, August 1, 1865. MR AMBROSE S LETTEES. LETTER I. JANUARY, 1863. MY DEAR MR. SEATON : This year, eighteen hun dred and sixty-three, marks our entrance upon the third annual period of the civil war. The quarrel still rages with unabated fury. Indeed, as it grows older, it seems to be come instinct with fiercer hatreds and to gather new vigor of resistance from its desperation. Is it not strange that such " a zeal to destroy" should so fire the heart of American citizens against the life of a nation whose birth and career have been the theme of more incessant, boastful, and extravagant pane gyric than the affection of any people ever before heaped upon their country ? Posterity will read the history of this commo tion with an interest full of amazement at the intensity of the passion it has stirred in the hearts of its authors, and the utter insignificance of the provocation upon which it arose. They will distrust with natural wonder the narrative which informs them that large communities of intelligent people, as happy in their homes as a propitious Heaven and a beneficent Govern ment could make them, peaceful and prosperous in the enjoy ment of every blessing coveted by man, fondly addicted to self-gratulation for their well-earned eminence among nations, envied by the whole world for their freedom, conscious only of Government by its ever-present bounty j that they should turn upon the work of their own hands, and in a year of sin gular cheerfulness a year of ovations, festivities, and pa- 336 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE geants should, all at once, convert their own Paradise into a Pandemonium, and fall to rending the magnificent structure of their liberties into fragments ; that they should pursue this awful labor of demolition through two long years of such car nage and desolation as the world never saw before, and should, with still more bitter hate and eager ferocity, enter upon a third : that a thinking, shrewd, kind-hearted, Christian people should do this, with unremitting effort to render the obloquy and disgrace of the American name immortal ! How shall after-ages study this terrible anomaly without a charitable doubt of its truth ? I know how painfully you meditate over this crisis, and I can not but believe nay, I am sure that many of our old friends on the other side of the line are in full sympathy with us in deploring the madness that has brought our country into this unhappy distraction. If we could but reach them with an in vocation to a calm review of those elements of discord which now separate us, I should be full of hope that the same wise spirit of counsel which won our confidence and love in past time, would bring us, as of old, into full accord, and that the kindly and powerful influence they were wont to exercise over the brotherhood, of which they and we were equally proud as citizens of our broad Republic, would be exerted within their own sphere, to stay the further rage of this tempest and open the path to that harmony and union which have been so cause lessly disturbed. With this intent and the indulgence of this hope, I address these letters to you, purposing, if haply the chances of the war should allow them to cross the line, to send them forth with a message of kind remembrance to old and cherished friends there, who I would fain believe have preserved their integrity and their reason unclouded by the passions which have hurried the multitudes around them into the dreadful vortex of the re bellion. Your friend, PAUL AMBROSE. To WM. W. SEATON, ESQUIRE, WASHINGTON. ON THE REBELLION. 337 LETTER II. SUDDEN CONVERSIONS. JANUARY, 1863. When a votary desires to make a sacrifice, he will find sticks enough under every hedge to kindle the fire. There is a Latin proverb to the same purport " Qui vult c&dere canem facile invenit fustem" My interpretation of this bit of experi ence is, that whenever we set our hearts upon a forbidden en terprise, an easy virtue will encounter no difficulty in the search for the means to get it on foot. Or, let me put it in another shape more germane to my present subject : When ever it is necessary to support a bad or doubtful cause by an argument, he is but a sorry casuist who will have to go far to find one. I am every day struck by the proof which the rebellion af fords to the accuracy of this insight into the nature of the or dinary conscience of mankind. It is curious to note the facil ity with which, at this time, many of the most respectable minds of the country, even many eminent in public affairs, have permitted themselves to lapse into that fatal apostasy which, in a moment, has cast aside the honorable conservatism of their whole lives, and plunged them into that very maze of political error which they have always taught themselves and others to shun. It is not long ago when it was almost the universal convic tion of our most approved statesmen, both North and South, and still more that of the great multitude who take their opin ions at second hand, that the doctrine of secession was a shal low invention of a few Quixotes in politics. In the days of General Jackson it was denounced and derided as the black- 338 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE est of treasons by the whole of that imperious party which, under his lead, swayed the public mind with absolute author ity. When he said " the Union must be preserved," these words meant something more than a policy of conciliation ; they were uttered as an angry threat against those who meditated disunion, and intimated that, if necessary, the Union should be preserved by the sword. The words were applauded by thousands and tens of thousands of those who to-day are cry ing out "this Union shall be destroyed." When he said, in strong and unequivocal phrase, that secession was treason, these same thousands re-echoed the sentiment with such ear nest repetition as to plant it in the very heart of the country as an article of faith. The intuition of the masses in this con viction was sustained by the better informed judgment of the most eminent expounders of the Constitution, by the Courts, by Congress, and by the Cabinet, at that time illustrious for the / great ability and experience of its members. It was not less sustained by the quiet support of nine-tenths of the edu cated men in every State, who, taking no share in the popular demonstrations of political action, gave their own healthful tone of thought to the social circles of their respective neigh borhoods. There were notable exceptions, it is true, to this common consent of opinion ; many in South Carolina, where a threat ened revolt had been staked upon the issue ; some in other States, and more particularly in Eastern Virginia, where a peculiar system of traditionary dialectics had bred a class of hair-splitting doctrinaires, not less remarkable for the eccentric ity of their dogmas than for the acuteness with which they maintained them. The philosophers of the Resolutions of 98 were few enough and grotesque enough, in the ordinary esti mation of the country, to provoke a good-natured laugh at the perseverance with which they muddled their brains in the mys tification of a problem that, in the common computation, had about as much practical value as that more celebrated scheme of Laputa, the extracting of sunbeams from cucumbers. But ON THE REBELLION. 339 even the Resolutionists, for the most part, stood by Jackson, and turned their back upon the doctrine of secession. Indeed, it may be affirmed, as an historical fact, that the whole South has, in different stages of our national career, at one time or another, repudiated this doctrine. The present generation is but little aware, and many of the last generation of Southern statesmen now alive choose to for get, that there once was an occasion which called forth a great deal of notice of this pretension of the right of a State to se cede from the Union, and that the prevailing sentiment of the South then branded it as a foul treason. The Hartford Convention, after much preliminary announce ment in the Legislatures of New-England States, met in De cember 1814, to devise plans for the security and defence of those States in the war with Great Britain, and to adopt such measures of self-protection as were " not repugnant to their Federal obligations as members of the Union." A different purpose was suspected by their political enemies ; and, whether justly or not, the popular belief of the South was, that notwith standing the restriction they had set upon their action, it was their design, in certain contingencies, to recommend the retire ment of their States from the Union. The members of that Con vention have vehemently denied this charge, but so far as the South was concerned, utterly without effect. Every man, wo man, and child of the South who was capable of receiving an impression from the topics of the day, heard the subject al luded to in conversation, or read of it in the papers, only as a scheme to dissolve the Union a project of secession. It was at that time the word " secession " itself first became familiar as a term of our political vocabulary. Before that date Mr. Jefferson called it " scission ;" and, by the by, pronounced it to be incompatible with any government. Whether, therefore, the Hartford Convention was slandered or not as I believe it was by this imputation, the general impression of its truth south of Mason and Dixon s line, brought up the opportunity for expression of Southern opinion on the question of secession. 340 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE Now, I am sure I am correct when I say that the imputed pur pose of the Convention was denounced from one end of the Southern States to the other, with peculiar bitterness, as a pur pose to commit a monstrous treason. They who remember the events of the day know that every leading man in those States, who made this supposed design of secession a theme for a speech from any forum ; that the general current of popular opinion in educated society ; the voice of the multitude which repeats the passwords of the day ; and the whole flow of editorial comment in the most authentic presses, all united in a common note of censure upon it as treason. More recently, in 1850 and 1851, when South Carolina, in her vigilant outlook for an opportunity to strike another blow at the Union, thought she had found it in the admission of Cal ifornia, and had summoned the malcontents of the South to a new attempt at secession, every one remembers, how her fa vorite scheme of crushing out our nationality failed for want of cooperation from her sister States. The manly opposition of a loyal minority within her own borders, and, still more, the calm good sense of those to whom she appealed outside of her bor ders, defeated her charitable design. The people of Missis sippi met in Convention and adjourned their deliberations with a sober resolution against the doctrine of a right of secession. Georgia discussed it, through the press and on the hustings, by her ablest exponents of constitutional law, and set her seal of condemnation upon it. It found no strength with which it was able to shake the faith of the people in their conviction of the right to be regarded as a nation. In that defeat there was nothing more to be admired than the instinctive recoil of the masses from the insidious teachings of ambitious politicians who sought to seduce them into this treason against the Gov ernment ; nothing more significant of the common perception of the danger and disgrace of this principle of disunion than the dexterity with which some of the present oracles of seces sion then shirked the responsibility of appearing as its advo cates. ON THE REBELLION. 341 In the Border States it had, at that date, no foothold among men of any repute in society, except perhaps in the rare and scattered instances of a few super- subtle extremists on the theory of State Rights. Even with them it was rather a speculation than a practical principle. Maryland might have had a handful of such men, but nobody heard of them. Ken tucky and Missouri could boast of as few. Virginia, notwith standing her passion for political metaphysics, though a little more demonstrative than the others, gave no further counte nance to this heresy than the grandiloquence of a few of her country squires shed upon it when indulging their endemic pro clivity towards the oracular at the monthly meetings of the county courts the Solons of a great State, which they had seen, within their own days, dwindling down from a star of the first to one of a fifth magnitude in the firmament of the Union a very natural experience to breed thoughts of discontent and separation. In all this long period, from the date of the Constitution until that of the inauguration of this civil war, during which the fundamental ideas of our Government were acquiring solidity through that process of induration by which forms of polity be come permanently established in the traditional respect of the people, the nationality of the Union was every day growing to be a more universally accepted fact. With the exception of a few sporadic instances of dissent, the mind of the country was settling down upon the conviction that the integrity of the Union was secured by the organic law, and could not lawfully be broken by any course of proceeding known to the Constitution or implied from the conditions under which it came into exist ence ; in short, that nothing but rebellion and successful rev olution could overthrow it. This conviction grew up in a state of peace which afforded leisure for calm and studious deliber ation ; a state of peace attended with such occasional perturba tions as served to bring the question into prominent notice, and to invite a careful consideration of its terms and incidents, and yet free from that passion which is apt to cloud the judgment 342 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE of the country. No national problem could be settled in cir cumstances more propitious to its true solution. How does it happen, after such an experience with such a result, that, all at once, the year 1861 should find the question not only thrown into the wind, but the almost universal judg ment of the country absolutely reversed, throughout a whole section of the South, embracing some eight or nine States and some four or five millions of citizens ? It would be very absurd to say that this change sprang out of a more thorough study of the history of the Government or a deeper insight into the philosophy of the Constitution. The year 1861 brought a tornado of violent excitements; men do not think with more careful deliberation in such a storm. It brought fierce ambitions into play, conspiracies, the clash of arms, the frenzy of party rage ; these are not the companions of patient research or wise conclusions. In point of capacity the men of 1861 were not the superiors I hope their amour propre will not be offended by my boldness of Marshall or Story, of Madison or Hamilton, of Webster or Clay, of Spen cer Roane or Lowndes, of Livingston or Jefferson, or even of Washington. How many more might I mention? Neither were these same men of 1861 wiser or more enlightened than they themselves were in 1851, when many of them took pains to teach their compatriots the fallacy as well as the danger of secession. It is unpleasant to come to this conclusion, but there is no other left to us. We must look for this sudden abjuration of our ancient faith to causes which spring from less noble mo tives than conviction, and belong to a lower range of human action than that of honest judgment. We must submit to be disenchanted of the illusion that the many excellent men we were accustomed to admire, and among them so many of our cherished friends, were too staunch in their truth, and too cour ageous in their virtue, to be shaken by any popular tempest. Let us confess with sorrow that many far too many to be thought of without a sigh for our country had not the stam- ON THE REBELLION. 343 ina for a time like this, and that they have either yielded to the spell of a popular excitement they had not the equanimity to withstand, or to the tyranny of a dictation they had not the manhood to brave. To one or the other of these influences they have surrendered the pride of their own intellectual emi nence, their consistency, and their independence. Yet, notwithstanding the appearances to the contrary and the fact that many, from whom we hoped better things, had fall en off, still I believe that there is a host of true and patriotic men scattered through every State of the Southern Confedera cy, who but bide their time to speak a potent word in support of that blessed old Union which the madness of our day has brought into jeopardy. I think you and I could name some of our old comrades, who will yet be heard sounding that clarion note of loyalty which the country has often heard in past time, when these very dangers now upon us were only looming in the distance. They are quiet now ; many of them in volunta ry exile, even in the bosom of the communities in which they dwell ; silent and sorrowful, no doubt, and longing for the day when they may come forward to speak of peace. I would fain believe that many good men of this cast are held in reserve by Providence for that special service. They wait for the subsid ing of the waters, when it may be safe to venture forth in quest of the olive branch. With what full hearts and overflowing eyes will they be welcomed to our bosoms, if they bring us that sacred symbol ! Let us wait and hope. LETTER III. SECESSION. FEBRUARY, 1863. It has been often said that the idea of restricting Govern ment to a written constitution is a fallacy ; that such a consti tution is inevitably incapable of providing for the emergencies 344 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE of national progress. The real constitution of a nation lies deeper than its visible ordinances, in the character, habits, and customs of the people, which do not admit of a complete expression by instrument of writing. The written fundamen tal law provides only for what is foreseen, and is, therefore, but imperfect wisdom. What is not foreseen lies in the breast of the nation, to be taken care of, when it comes into view, by such mode of disposal as the case may require ; either by pro cess appointed for amendment, which is always slow and un certain ; or by gradual and imperceptible adoption, which is only the work of years ; or by quick resort to such power as is at hand to meet an exigency which the nation recognizes as a necessity too urgent for delay. In one or the other of these modes a nation organizes itself and conforms its institutions to its needs. It crystallizes in the forms appropriate to its special quality. Thus all orderly government is manifested as a growth, and not merely as a formula. We have something of a verification of this opinion in the changes which have already crept into our Constitution by the side-paths of usage, and in the constant tendency towards change which, if not accomplished, has yet given birth to many party contests to procure it. The practical alteration of the mode of electing the President is one example ; the acquisi tion of territory, as in the purchase of Louisiana, is another ; the recent enactment of legal tender and the suspension of habeas corpus are initiatory movements in the same direction, and may be regarded as a primary utterance of a necessity which in time may grow into established law. We may readi ly enumerate cases in which the Constitution though now but seventy-four years old has been modified, or at least settled by construction ; and it is somewhat noticeable that in most of these expansions, if not invasions, of the letter, the strict constructionists have led the way. You and I can remember when the party now most active in urging the Government to make a railroad to California, was uncompromising in its de nial of power to construct the Cumberland turnpike. Some ON THE REBELLION. 345 of them were so conscientious as to refuse a vote for paving the Pennsylvania Avenue. These scruples are obsolete now ; not because the written law is changed, nor that it is discovered to admit of a new meaning, but simply because it does not meet the exigencies of national growth. A change in the organic law has been ef fected by construction that is to say, by adding something to the Constitution, or taking something away from it, or other wise interpreting its meaning. I cannot find fault with this gradual adaptation of the fun damental law to the wants of the nation. In general, it is a healthful mode of change, and is ordinarily the natural expres sion of a necessity, a tacit acknowledgment of the will of the nation that its institutions should be moulded to the public convenience, and is apt to be a wiser process of amendment than that prescribed by law. It moves in the track of expe rience, and does not go beyond its requirements. Such amendments, indeed, are experiences, not experiments. We thus insensibly get out of the trammels of a written constitu tion, by building upon it, through a series of accretions, a tra ditional constitution which, in the course of a few centuries, will ripen into a solid organism exactly suited to the needs and instincts of the people. The final good, however, is not attained without many al ternations between failure and success, the vibrations of the needle before it settles upon its true point. It is only reached through occasional struggles, turbulent conflicts sometimes, and sometimes great convulsions. The ordinary process of national development is, in the main, peaceable. A century of progress may go on without a war, but epochs emerge soon er or later when disputed demands come into the arena of de bate and opposing ideas assert themselves in arms. No na tion has ever reached its highest term of manifestation with out a resort to the fierce arbitrament of the sword and many a field of blood. This seems to be the normal law of human society, by 15* 346 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE which it is ordained that Governments shall arrive at their greatest capability through a career of strife and suffering. The sinews of nations are strengthened by conflict, and their vir tues nourished by the discipline of pain and sorrow. We are at this day passing through one of these dreadful probations. I think any man trained in the study of history might have predicted that at whatever period in our national career the doctrine of a constitutional right on the part of a State peace ably and at its own pleasure, to secede from the compact of the Union, was seriously asserted and attempted to be exer cised by a party in the country or by one or more States, such an attempt would necessarily produce a conflict of arms. Whatever might be the question upon which the claimant should choose to institute this proceeding, whether on com mercial tariffs, on slavery, on domestic or foreign policy, or any mere project of ambition, it matters not what, the enter prise would invoke the determined resistance of every man who cherished a regard for the nationality of the Union ; and, if it could not be defeated by argument and persuasion, it would drive the parties into the collision of battle. If the ad vocates of the principle should succeed in that battle the old government would disappear, an entire new order of things would arise, and history would be furnished with one more ex ample of disrupted empire and fragment communities settling into new forms or warring through ages of changeful disorder. If, on the other hand, they should be overthrown, the Consti tution would come forth purified and renovated by the ordeal, and would strike with deeper root into the soil of the national faith and take a more sturdy growth in the attachment of the people. I think these might have been the predictions of any learned student of the prevailing sentiment of the American people, without waiting for the insight afforded him by the sad realities of the present day. For myself, I do not hesitate to affirm that I think this doctrine of a right of secession so intrinsically mischievous, so incompatible with any national progress, and so destructive of ON THE REBELLION. 347 all rational hope of peace or happiness, that if it really had any place in our system, it should be the first duty of this gen eration to get rid of it at any cost ; that, in this earnest effort of combined States to plant it among the acknowledged rights of the members of the Union, it is worth all the sacrifice of this war, however long it may be protracted, worth all the trib ulation it has brought or may bring us, to free our posterity from a heresy so full of evil to us and to them. Notwithstanding the vehemence with which this right is now asserted, the question, I am happy to believe, is not yet removed from the domain of argument which may be address ed, with some hope of patient consideration, to many honest minds in the South, to whom the disappointments of defeat or, at least, the delay of success, may have brought a calmer judg ment and a more complacent temper. It is in that hope I ex pand the limits of this letter. No, one, I believe, has ever claimed Secession to be one of the rights acknowledged by the Constitution to reside in the States. The second section of the sixth article of the Consti tution would seem to infer exactly the reverse. Its advocates generally claim it as a reserved or, more properly, an implied right, resulting from, what they assert to be, the original Sov ereignty of the States. They say, that the States, being sov ereign when they entered into the Union, and being the crea tors of the Union, necessarily retain all their original sover eignty which they affirm to be inalienable by any compact to be exercised whenever they think proper : that, in fact, they are bound by the laws of the Union only as long as they choose to remain in it. I have two objections to make to this statement. The first relates to the character and nature of the sovereignty claimed by the States, which I shall notice more at large in a future letter, affirming, for the present, that the States possess no such sovereignty as is claimed for them. The second ob jection I make is that, supposing a State to possess every attribute of sovereignty compatible with our system of govern- 848 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ernment and to the fullest extent asserted by the defenders of the doctrine, it may, quite as effectively as an individual per son, enter into a social or political compact and bind itself to the conditions and duties of that compact, even to the com plete and perpetual surrender of its separate existence as an independent corporation. This is precisely what the original States did, so far as they acted, as States, in forming the Constitution But, combined with this State action in forming the Constitution, there was another party to the compact, more powerful than the States the people of all the States, who designated themselves as " the people of the United States" the nation who were the acknowledged repositories of all power, both over the States and over the National Government, and who, in that name, declared the supreme law by which both the National and State Governments were to be controlled in the due adminis tration of the system they proposed to the country. In short, they, the people, created the United States and made them emphatically one nation, with supreme powers within the orbit assigned to it. The question is simply reduced to this : Do the United States constitute A NATION, or do they represent an agglomer ate of nations, bound together by a temporary bond of a tex ture so feeble that any one may lawfully put an end to the combination whenever it may find a motive to do so ? Was it the intention of the States and the people really to construct a temporary alliance of separate nations, dependent for its duration upon a tenure so frail as the possible and probable discontent of a dominant party in any one of the associated na tions ? The answer to this question will lead us directly to a con sideration of what we must suppose to be the common-sense view which the founders of the Government took of the enter prise they had in hand, I mean to the estimate they made, while they were engaged in moulding the Constitution, of the object they intended to accomplish. This is an a priori view ON THE REBELLION. 349 of their purpose, and avoids all debate upon those subtleties of interpretation which, at a later day, ingenious logicians have invented to prove a right of secession. What did the authors of the Constitution intend to estab lish, when they met together to frame a Constitution for the Government of the United States ? I waive all reference to that record of historical facts, which is now extant, to prove that the controlling majority of the Convention discussed the question, and maturely decided that their purpose was to erect a nation out of Confederate States, which nation should possess every function of suprem acy necessary to preserve its own existence ; and that to estab lish and secure such supremacy the several States should sur render, or, in more appropriate phrase, should be denied every attribute of sovereignty that could interfere with or impede the free and full exercise of the national sovereignty it was their design to create, and equally their declared intention to render perpetual. I waive all reference to this record, and, for the present, look only to what must have been the common-sense view which these clear-sighted men took of the task committed to them. Did they deem it expedient or wise to invest, either by grant or implication, the States then existing, or which in future time might be organized, with what is now claimed as the right of secession ? In responding to this inquiry it is only necessary to reflect upon some of the most prominent and obvious consequences which follow the practical application of this right. We shall then be able to determine how far these are compatible with the design of the Constitution, as this is apparent in its text. It is not a strained conclusion to assume that the architects of the structure intended to make a self-preserving and not a self-destroying Union ; that they proposed a system which should protect the vital interests of the country, not expose them to unnecessary peril ; a system that would work through coming ages and promote the prosperity of many generations. 350 LETTEES OF MK. AMBROSE Looking at their projected labors in this light, I proceed to remark upon the incidents which the most ordinary foresight would discover as the probable attendants upon the exercise of a right of secession, and which our late experiment of it has brought into view as actual impending dangers. i. The retirement of any State from the Union, even in the mildest mode of such a proceeding, could not but be account ed a most disastrous calamity, full of peril not only to the do mestic peace of the country, but also to its foreign relations. An act of secession by the smallest State in the Union would make that State, according to the theory, an independent government In that character it would have a right to form alliances with foreign powers, to place itself under their pro tection ; even to unite itself as a dependency to the most for midable enemy of the States it had left, and thus give to such an enemy a foothold on the soil, with all the advantages he could desire for invasion, the very danger which it was a prime object of the Union to avert. It would be in the power of the least of the States, in this category, to disturb the regulation of the national commerce, by the adoption of an adverse sys tem of trade, by discriminating duties, by restricted privileges of navigation, and other devices of annoyance. It would fur nish a refuge to fugitives from justice, and, what is worse in the computation of ills, according to the ethics which have lately grown almost into a religion in some portions of our country, to fugitives from servitude. It is easy to conceive how very inconvenient such a neighbor might become to the general wel fare of the nation by a thousand forms of vexation open to the practice of the most inconsiderable State in such a relation. How much more significant and aggravating would be these irritations in the case of the secession of a large central State like that of Pennsylvania ! Can we believe that the framers of our National Government contemplated with complacency the possible contingency of a large and powerful Common wealth, lying in the very bosom of the Union, erecting itself into an independent government, and assuming a character ON THE KEBELLION. 351 that might, in any event, authorize it to embarass the commu nication between the North and South ; to exact, duties upon every transit of merchandise ; to demand passports from every traveller, or totally to interdict both and compel the severed fragments of the nation to seek their intercourse with each oth er by a long detour around her borders ? Can we persuade ourselves that the men of 1787 had in their thoughts the foun dation of a Union that should be subject to such contingencies as these ? 2. Secession not only endangers the national welfare by planting a foreign nation within the circle of the Confederacy, but it absolutely paralyzes the Government by depriving it of the capacity to perform its most necessary functions. The Government is authorized and, by its needs, required to contract debts and to pledge the faith of the whole nation for their payment : Secession rends it asunder and disables it from performing this pledge. The Government makes treaties : Secession repudiates or impairs them. The Government builds forts, creates armies and navies, founds arsenals, establishes mints, post-offices, hospitals : Se cession seizes, appropriates, or destroys all these within the reach of its arm. The Government acquires territory, holds public lands, and erects States : Secession confiscates these possessions and ap plies them to its own profit. The history of Florida affords a striking illustration on this point. That territory was originally purchased by the United States at the cost of five millions of dollars. Some fifty, or perhaps a hundred millions more were expended in its defence. It was purchased on considerations purely national, as essen tial to the commercial and military advantage of the country. It contains about thirty millions acres of available land, which, by the purchase, became a public domain. Emigrants from other States went there and were allowed to settle on this do main upon payment of a small amount per acre for the fee. 352 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE In the year 1845 there had emigrated into this territory a pop ulation which, added to the settlers already there, amounted to something less than forty thousand white persons, who had become the owners of perhaps some two or three millions of acres. In this year, 1845, these persons very earnestly desired the privilege of being erected into a State, and to that end pe titioned the Government of the United States to confer upon them this greatly desired boon. At that date the high tariff of 1842 was in full operation; the question of slavery was as rife, as active, and as virulent in its agitation of the country as it has ever been since ; in short, every Southern grief, as in terpreted in the inflamed politics of our day, was as poignant at that time as it was in 1860. Notwithstanding these motives " to heap curses upon the Union," which some of the most au thoritative teachers of Southern rights were then urging upon their disciples, the people of Florida, with their eyes open to all the " iniquities" they now impute to the National Government, prayed for admission, and they were kindly received and wel comed as a loyal addition to the fellowship of States. After a brief existence of fifteen years, during which the Government was known to them only by the profusion of its bounties, upon some pretence of convenience for they had none of oppression they avail themselves of this right of se cession to enable them to retire from the Union. By this act they not only claim to deprive the people of the United States of the whole benefit of the considerations which originally in duced the purchase of this territory from Spain, as a national necessity the great forts upon the coast, the naval depc A >ts, the supply of ship-timber, the light-houses and guides to naviga tion, and the means of protecting the commerce of the coun try but they also assume a right to the eminent domain of all the public lands and to appropriate them according to their own pleasure. The white population of Florida to-day is about double what it was in 1845, something less than eighty thou sand ; and if we suppose the public lands they have seized and sequestered by this exercise of the lawful right of secession to ON THE REBELLION. 353 be twenty millions of acres, they would be able to divide among the present white men, women, and children of Flori da something more than two hundred and fifty acres of land apiece, which would represent the legitimate profit of a right which, it is asserted, the founders of the Government of the United States, deliberately and in the full exercise of their wis dom, reserved to the people of the States. Certainly, we might very reasonably presume that, if the framers of the Government contemplated such a possibility as the case of Florida presents, now in actual existence, they would have ordained, as an indispensable enactment of the Constitution, that no territory acquired by the nation should ever be lifted up into the dangerous eminence of a State ; that, indeed, the " old Thirteen" alone should limit the circle of sov ereignties armed with this power of spoliation ; that no other portion of the national domain should be permitted to hatch its cockatrice brood of serpent States to sting the parent which nursed them in its bosom. 3. The Constitution declares that " no State shall, without the consent of Congress, enter into any agreement or compact with another State." Secession, as its first step, annuls this law and seeks auxiliary alliance from its neighbors. Nothing would be so impracticable, and therefore nothing so improbable, in the development of this doctrine of secession, as the attempt of a single State of the Union to set up for it self an independent nationality, to be maintained without the aid and concurrence of other States. The geographical rela tions of certain groups of States, into which the Union is divid ed by climate and production and by similarity of institution, present, very distinctly to our notice, characteristic affinities which create, both socially and politically, a more intimate connection between the members of these several groups than is observable in the larger and more important circle of the Union as defined by the Constitution. The Planting States form one of these groups ; the Western States another : so of the Middle States, and, further north, the New England. 354 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE They are all associated in one grand and beneficent political bond but, in these minor and natural divisions, they are allied by sympathies and sentiments which grow out of proximity of position and that identification of pursuit and interest which the conditions of their social life impress upon them. When any State, therefore, should meditate the purpose of withdrawing from the Union, in the exercise of this asserted right, it would naturally and indeed we may say it would nec essarily, as an indispensable auxiliary to its purpose, seek the alliance of the States which stand in kindred relation with it self, and would use all the means at its command to enlist them in its cause. So apparent is this necessity to persuade or seduce other States whose prejudices or sympathies may be wrought upon to concur in the work of disruption, that it may be regarded as the most flagrant mischief that attends the assertion of the right to secede. It brings up before us that enormous wrong, the most deadly which can be inflicted on any State, the secret plotting of eager agents of discontent to inflame the heart of peaceful communities with imaginary griefs, and rouse them to the temper of an assault against the existence of the nation. It shocks us by the perception of a danger of disin tegration which, once commenced, may go on until the whole political fabric is crumbled into fragments. In the events which have plunged the nation into its present state of distress we have notable exemplification of this inci dent of secession. The discontents of South Carolina the first State which inaugurated the civil war were notoriously peculiar to that Commonwealth. They had existed for thirty years, and were greatly exasperated by if indeed they did not owe their birth to the quarrel of 1832, when the pride of the State was humbled by the peremptory measures taken by the National Administration. At that period her claim to a right of secession was, as I have shown in a former letter, not only bluntly repelled by the Government, but equally repudiated by every State in the Union, and Carolina was forced to submit ON THE REBELLION. 355 not less by the threat of coercion by President Jackson, than by the rebuke of the States to which she had appealed for co-op eration. Her mortified pride made her from that era the in veterate enemy of the Union. In the act of secession of December, 1860, she only accomplished the long-harbored de sign for which she had been waiting with ill-concealed impa tience ever since the arrow had pierced her side. Yet, notwithstanding the rash boast with which she entered into this fatal measure that she would plunge into the mael strom of secession alone, irrespective of co-operation from any other State no one believes that she would have assayed the experiment if she had not ascertained beforehand that she would be supported by the auxiliaries which immediately after wards hastened to her aid. There is abundant proof in this concerted movement if we had it not from other sources that, long before and in preparation for this event, a conspira cy had been formed to seduce, cajole, or compel other States into complicity with a plot which she had contrived and set in motion for the redress of her own griefs. The whole country knows with what signal and almost in dignant reproof several of the States now in rebellion rejected the first overtures to join in this enterprise ; how emphatically the people of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and others expressed their disapprobation of the petulant and boastful treason of South Carolina, And yet the country now sees these very States subdued to the service of the conspiracy by the intrigues and domineering importunity of the political agents who had cast their fortunes in this ven ture. It is therefore, that I say the worst evil, attendant upon the practical assertion of this pretended right of secession, exists in the fact that an imperious necessity forces the agents of the plot to the device of infusing their own discontent into the minds of neighbor communities, and of seeking, by unlawful solicitation and sinister arts, to spread the circle of the con spiracy over other States. Thus, the letter and the theory of 356 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE the Constitution are violated and set at nought by overtures and by compact and agreement with other States, which, whether secret or open, are equally offensive and repugnant to the obligation that every State assumes on entering into the Union. 4. Secession very distinctly assails and destroys the per sonal rights conferred by the Constitution upon the people of every State in the Union. Being a citizen of the United States I am entitled to all the privileges of that citizenship in every State. In other words, no State within the compass of the Union, as created by the Constitution, can treat me as an alien. This I take to be the meaning of that clause which guarantees to the citizens of each State " all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Secession in a moment rescinds and ignores this right He who holds a patent for an invention, or copyright of a book, loses it throughout the seceded States. He who possess es property in such a State, or an expectation of an inheritance in it, may be deprived of it by seizure and confiscation or by escheat : if he be a creditor he may be forbidden to sue for or collect his debt. In all these cases the American citizen, who is secured by the Constitution against any interference with these rights, becomes dependent on the comity merely of the seced ing State for their acknowledgment. Whatever may be the policy of such a State in regard to this acknowledgment whether it be swayed by temperate and just counsels or by the angry passions which are most likely to predominate in the separation it is obvious that the citizen of the nation loses every personal as well as public right, which the forethought of his ancestors had conferred upon him, in so much of his na tive land as is cut off by the scission, and is left entirely at the mercy of the State for such favor as its Government, exasper ated it may be by his obtuseness in not assenting to the teach ing of secession, may be disposed to grant. 5. The right to secede from the Union implies a right to ON THE EEBELLION. 357 expel from the Union. If one can withdraw from many, many may withdraw from one. If the Union may become inconve nient or disagreeable to one, one may become disagreeable to the Union. If one, for that reason, may retire, why may not the others for that reason expel ? The Constitution makes no regulation for either case ; and if the logic of secession be sound that the State sovereignty may be resumed on a mo tive of discontent, and is then at liberty to adopt its own " mode and measures of redress" the logic is equally sound that infers in favor of a majority of State sovereigns, being dis contented with one, the same liberty to adopt their own mode and measure of redress. These rights if there be any right at all to break up the compact of Union are correlatives. Can any champion of these transcendent State-Rights distin guish between the lawfulness of these two proceedings of se cession and expulsion ? Both have the same foundation, if either have any, in that sovereign " will and pleasure" which secessionists affirm every State retains in petto as a reserved prerogative. Now, we may fancy with what a fiery burst of insulted ma jesty one of these hot-headed States which have been so arro gant in their claim of a right of secession South Carolina, for example would have resented a proposition of expulsion sug gested to the Council of the Union by any other State as the peaceful process allowed by the Constitution to get rid of her as a troublesome sister. Imagine the flare-up in the Old Do minion against the insolence of such a proceeding applied to her. What conclaves should we not have, what a flurry of po litical conventions, what a buzz and hum in every village, what indignant protests against usurped power from sophisters of the State-Rights academy, what refined distinctions and discrim inations from the abstraction-mongers, and what instant threat of war, seizure of Gosport Navy- Yard, of Harper s Ferry, of forts and arsenals, and all the other violences and menaces which burgeon from the stock of Southern temper ! What ! claim a right to drive a sovereign State out of the Union made 358 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE by our fathers ; to deprive us of our inestimable privileges as members of the Great Republic, whose birth was consecrated by the blood of heroes from every State and shed upon a hun dred fields ; to strip us of our proud prerogative of American citizenship ; to derange or destroy our commerce ; to deprive us of our rights in the common domain, won by the united strength and valor of all the States ; to take away from us the protection of the common defence, our share in the benefits of the common treasure, and to cast us upon the wide world a dwarfed and dishonored people, a prey to the power and domi nation of any enemy who may find it his interest to subdue us ; and then to insult our intelligence by telling us that your right to inflict this injury and disgrace upon us is a right reserved to you by the founders of our Union ! ! ! What a volume of such rhetoric as this would be poured out at every cross-road hustings in the whole country ! Repulsive as the assertion of such a claim as this would be to the cherished traditional idea of national unity and to the common perception of the duty of securing to every State its rights in the Union, in which the people of the United States have been educated, it is not more repulsive than that parallel and correlative claim of a State to retire from this connection at its own pleasure. Of the two, the latter is the least tolera ble in a fair, statesmanlike estimate of its incongruity with the general welfare of the nation ; for, while the first is the most improbable of all contingencies in the progress of government, and would never even be thought of but under such provoca tion as, in the nature of things, must be so excessive, persist ent, and enormous as to be, in common experience, impossi ble ; the latter, as our recent history proves, would be an ever- present danger from its adaptation to the use of political fac tion and from its quality to captivate the multitude by its flat tery of State pride. To an earnest and thoughtful reflection on the attributes of our Union and the dangers to which it is exposed, it must occur that all that can be urged against the expulsion of a ON THE REBELLION. 359 State, may be with equal force, and with deeper conviction of the necessity of impressing it upon the popular mind, be urged against the secession of a State. The arguments touching the right are the same ; the mischief to be averted is incompar ably the greater in the case of secession. I might enlarge this enumeration of the anomalies which become apparent in the contrast between the manifest design which the authors of the Constitution had in view, and the equally manifest incidents which belong to the practical appli cation of this pretended right of secession. But it is only necessary to glance at those which I have arranged under these five divisions, to perceive that the antagonism is so positive and so destructive of the scheme of the Union which occupied the thoughts of the legislators, that to impute to them such an obstruction, as a premeditated contrivance, is to charge them with the folly of constructing a machine, which, by its inherent disregard of mechanical laws, was incapable of performing its most necessary and important functions a machine which must soon jar itself out of all possibility of action and tumble to pieces by the strain of its own friction. We should lose all respect for the memory of such bungling workmen, as this theo ry would compel us to regard those great and good statesmen who have, for seventy years, been consecrated in our affections as the wisest and best of the founders of States. So far, in the consideration of this question of secession, I have confined my view to the difficulties which the doctrine presents as an impediment to the administration of the Gov ernment in conformity with the obvious design of the Con stitution. In the next letter I shall discuss it more briefly under another aspect. 360 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE LETTER IV. SECESSION. MARCH, 1863. If we could accord to the philosophy of the Southern school the merit of even a plausible theory, in its inculcation of the right of secession, and could admit that this right se cured a principle which a State might, in some possible emer gency, find it useful to bring into practice for its own advan tage, and that, contemplating the rare occurrence of such a possibility, the framers of the Constitution did really intend to give it a place in their scheme, as a latent power to be awakened into activity only as a substitute for revolution, we should find ourselves arrested at that point by the remarkable failure of the Constitution to provide for its own execution ; and, in the total absence of all regulation upon this subject, we should be obliged to conclude either that this feature of the scheme was abandoned, or that, in some moment of drowsy forgetfulness, those notoriously vigilant and astute gentlemen whom we are accustomed to laud as the sages of our golden age Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and the rest had withdrawn from their watch and left their otherwise consummate work not only unfinished but actually too imper fect to admit of the first step towards the demonstration of this element, which, it is said, they intended to incorporate into the structure. On this matter of secession they preserved a silence so profound, and so extraordinary if they had any consciousness of its existence as to make it the most obscure and helpless of antiquarian studies to determine, at this day, whether a solitary man of that era ever heard the idea of secession broached, or ever dreamed of it himself. Nothing ON THE REBELLION. 361 so difficult now as to tell when it was first thought of, who originated it, and where it is to be found. Looking to the portentous magnitude of this power, to the embarrassments it would produce, and the contingencies it would create, it is inconceivable that law-makers of the most ordinary sagacity could recognize it as an existing principle in their scheme of government, without devoting a chapter to its definition and to the necessary provision for its consequences. They would have devised ordinances to meet every category into which an act of secession would have thrown the country. They would have pointed out the modus operandi, the assem bling perhaps of a National Convention, the manner of an nouncement of the proposed withdrawal, and the arrangement of its conditions. They would have made a rule for the division of public property, the payment of debts, the modification of treaties, the protection of private rights, the disposal of ter ritory, and the numerous other matters affecting the public peace and safety, which this destructive process would call into urgent notice. To make secession what it is claimed to be, a peaceable proceeding, would require a code of legislation of the highest wisdom . Without such legislation its attempt could be nothing else than a turbulent, headlong rush into a melee of fierce political strife. Now, we are to suppose that, with all these necessities and direful consequences in view, our fathers consented in silence to this malignant power ; that they delivered to their pos terity the great work confided to their labor the creation of a Union designed to be as perfect and as nearly perpetual as human wisdom could make it with the seeds of this mor tal disease planted in its heart, planted with their knowledge and approval ; that they made no provision to mitigate its virulence or assuage the pain of its stroke ; did not even name it, but left it a silent and lurking poison in the inmost depths of the Constitution, to destroy the life of the nation whenever occasion might awaken it into activity. We are to 16 362 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE believe this, and then exalt our fathers among the benefac tors of mankind, as the first founders of a State who ever had the sagacity to provide a povver for the early and swift destruction of their own work, and to leave that power under the simple guidance of its own unregulated discretion, or, as present events interpret it, its own blind passion. This conclusion is the more revolting to us, when we re flect, in the light of events now disturbing the country, by what dishonest means a State may be driven to practice this method of separation ; how much it is at the hazard of fac tion ; how the proceeding may be procured by a forced vote against the will of the people ; how it may be stimulated by the mad impulses of a day, in some access of that capricious rage to which the passions of the multitude are so easily ex cited by popular leaders. This step once taken, the natural drift of events soon makes it irrevocable. No day of calmer judgment, no future repentance of a generation weeping over the crime of their ancestors, may haply find the juncture suitable to restoration. Or if that season to retrieve the error come, how mournfully may it illustrate, by its delay, the dreadful catastrophe of a plunge into an abyss from which the return is only through an ocean of blood and years of sorrow ! Turning aside from these considerations, which seem to be sufficiently cogent of themselves to settle the question, I propose to devote this letter to a few remarks upon what I regard the total unsoundness of the argument by which the advocates of the right of secession generally undertake to maintain it. They are accustomed to affirm that it legiti mately results from the theory of the original or antecedent sovereignty of the -States ; that the States, when they entered into the compact of Union, reserved all the rights of absolute sovereignty, to be resumed by them, whenever they, in their own judgment of the necessity, might think proper to do so. They go further than this, and, refining upon the nature of sovereignty, they say that this right to resume did not require any assertion as a reserved power, but necessarily resulted ON THE REBELLION. 363 from the inherent and inalienable quality of sovereignty; that it is of no avail in the argument to inquire whether the founders of the Union had or had not a conception of seces sion, the right to withdraw from the compact was still there in virtue of the original sovereignty, and could not be given away even by the State itself. It was something of " a higher law," a kind of divine right, far above the Constitution and Union ; a right which lay in nubibus, or in language more suitable to its high pretension in the empyrean, until it was wanted here on earth. This is the transcendental extreme of the Southern philosophy on the subject. The Seceding States have acted on this theory. Some of them simply repealed the declaration of their assent to the ratification of the Constitution ; repealed, as Mr. Everett has well stated it, " an historical fact," imply ing by that act, that what was once a fact of past time is no longer a fact; they repealed the fact that, in the year 1789, Virginia agreed to come into the Union on the terms proposed, an incident no more repealable than the surrender of York- town. The act of ratification was a deed, not a law ; it was an acknowledgment of fealty to the United States, which neither party conceived was an act subject to any modification or repeal by any future legislature or convention. Since that day the higher law has been discovered, and has been brought down from its cloudy abode deus ex machina to throw our whole continent into confusion. I need not say, after what I have written in my previous letter, that I totally dissent from every item in this summary of the doctrine of secession ; but, for the present, I pretermit all objection to the theory it proposes, and proceed to notice the condition in which it leaves the question. Suppose it be a sound principle that this right results from the original sovereignty of the State, and that no com pact, however solemn, can bind a State to the renunciation or circumscription of its sovereign attributes longer than it is its own continuous will te be bound ; or suppose that those States, in forming the Union, actually reserved this right, as 364 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE the prerogative of their antecedent sovereignty, these admis sions would bring us to the recognition of an anomalous di versity in the composition of the -Union, which has never hitherto been perceived, and which would, if it really existed, become the source of endless quarrel. The right of seces sion, on this foundation, would be limited to those States only which can establish a claim to an original or pre-existing sovereignty. The Union would be divided into States having the right, and States not having the right one portion of the Confederacy elevated in rank and majesty above the other. Those having the right would be the " old Thirteen," with the addition of the State of Texas, which came into the Union bringing with it the attributes of a previously existing sov ereignty. The Union now consists speaking of it as it was at the commencement of the rebellion of thirty-four States. Of these, twenty-one have been created by act of Congress ; and among these twenty-one, Texas alone had an anterior exist ence as a sovereign power. Twenty of the States, therefore, are, as limited sovereignties, the mere creatures of the Na tional Government. Can it be claimed for these -twenty States, that they hold a reserved right to resume their sovereignty and to retire from the Union as independent nations ? Clearly, resumption is not the word applicable to them. How resume what they never had, absolute and independent sovereignty ? So there is another distinction that cannot be got rid of, States in the Union that may resume, and States that may not resume. These new States, if they do any thing in this way, must seize what was never given to them, must usurp a prerogative they never had, in order to bring them to an equal dignity with the old States, or elevate them to the rank of Texas. That is the absurd dilemma of secession. Many of those States are formed on territory purchased by the National Gov ernment for the benefit of the nation ; all of them on territory either purchased or ceded for the advancement of the com- ON THE REBELLION. 365 mon welfare. If they lapse from their present condition by abandoning their privileges in the Union, one would naturally say they lapsed back into their original predicament. That is precisely what the old States claim by their secession. The new States would fall back into Territories, the old ones into Sovereignties. And thus we have another distinction between the States, logically resulting from the theory of secession. The idea that the new States could lapse into something greater than their original condition is a solecism that, in a less grave argument, would be called " a bull." The Terri tories were not given away to the people who inhabit them, but organized for the use and advantage of the Union. They had no antecedent sovereignty whatever. They were clothed with no power but that which was necessary to make them loyal members of the American Union. The most absurd thought that could be imputed to Congress, when it gave them political existence, is, that in elevating them to the rank of States, it was giving them a power to destroy the Union, and to aggrandize themselves at the expense of all the other States. It is simply preposterous to say that the Constitution contemplated any such consequence when it authorized Con gress to create new States. If such a consequence could, in any contingency, lawfully result from this power, no greater folly could be ascribed to the people of the United States than that of authorizing any Territory to be erected into a State. It would be a cheap way of despoiling the Union of its most valued possessions. At one time the Government intimated a wish to purchase Cuba for one hundred millions of money. What possible in ducement could persuade an American statesman to desire such an acquisition, if the acknowledged, lawful consequence of such a purchase could, in any event, authorize the inhabitants of that island, after they were organized as a State of the Union, which would have immediately followed, to with draw from the compact and assume an absolute sovereign do minion over that rich possession, appropriate its land to their 366 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE own use, and deprive the nation of all the advantage it design ed by the purchase ? Yet such is the claim made by the right of secession, and such not only the possibility, but, judging from our recent experience in the case of Florida and Louisiana, the imminent probability of the assertion of this right. Once let the people of Cuba into the secret of our " verdant simplic ity" on this point, and we open to them the perception of an easy and profitable device by which they may obtain one hun dred millions of our money and still secure Cuba to their own disposal and control. This is a reductio ad absurdum, and ought to be conclusive to any sound judgment, that the right of secession cannot be predicated, at least in the case of the new States, I mean the States created by act of Congress. Now, I think it is good argument to say, that if there be no right of secession in the new States, it does not exist in the old. Our system was de signed to be homogeneous. We detect no discrimination be tween the States in their constitutional description. They are all designated by the same investiture of rights and duties ; literally equal in all attributes and relations. The distinction between new and old is simply chronological. The authority to make additions to the Union is given in few words, with out qualification. "New States may be admitted by Congress into this Union." That is all the Constitution utters on the subject. It could not have escaped the authors of this clause that the new States would, in process of time, grow up to great in fluence and importance in the system. They probably foresaw that these States might eventually come to constitute, in num bers and wealth, the most powerful portion of the Union ; for they had even then large territories in their view which were beginning to germinate in the development of political organ ization. New acquisitions of territory were probably not be yond the forecast of many members of the convention. They were also convinced that no disparity of rights between old and new States would ever be recognized or tolerated. ON THE EEBELLION. 367 Now, the new States those to be formed out of the public domain having no pretence to a right of secession deduced from original sovereignty, could only obtain it by express grant. Such a grant no one has ventured to contend is found in the Constitution. We may fairly argue that if the framers of the Constitution believed the old States had this right by implica tion, they would have also conferred it upon the new by grant ; that they did not so confer it upon the latter, is proof that they did not believe in its existence in the former. The conferring of it upon either would have been to recognize what I have shown to be, in the old States a right to perpetrate a most fla grant injury upon the country, and, in the new, a right to aggra vate the crime of breaking up the Union by adding to it the in ducement to plunder the public treasury by the trick of seizing the public domain ; even, in a supposable case like that of Cuba, to convert a large appropriation for a purchase into a gratuity without an equivalent. Doubtless the answer to this insinuation would be, that the honor of the States which boast of their chivalry may be safely trusted that no such wrong would be inflicted. That might have been a plausible answer years ago. But look at Florida now. Look at every seceding State that holds any portion of the public domain. Look at the seizure of the mint, the early and swift confiscation of all Government property, as the first steps in the rebellion. We shall have a settlement of all these, perhaps, at the Greek Ka lends ! I have but one more point to notice in my reference to tjie special grounds upon which the secessionists defend their doctrine, and with that I shall finish this letter and dismiss the subject. The whole argument in favor of secession is founded on a petitio principii which I hold to, be totally inadmissible. The common statement of that argument is, that the Union is but a confederacy of sovereign States; merely a complex league, in which each member retains all the sovereignty of an independent nation ; that the Federal Government is noth- 368 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ing more than an agency created by these States for the con venience of performing certain functions for their benefit. From this statement, the deduction seems to be universally accepted by the secessionists, and even too carelessly allowed by their opponents, that the Union being a league, any mem ber of it has a right to withdraw whenever it choses to do so. They concede that if the United States were a Nation, in the proper sense of that term, they could not do this. A League. they say, presents a different case. A member may withdraw from a league. Now, I do not mean to spend any time in controverting the basis on which this proposition rests, the affirmation, namely, that the Union is simply a league, or that it was cre ated only by the States. That notion has been abundantly refuted by abler pens than mine. But I deny the deduction drawn from this basis. If this were true, in point of fact, I think it a great mistake to affirm that the member of a League of sovereign States has any right to retire from the association at its own pleasure. A league between States is a compact more solemn and more binding than an ordinary treaty between nations. It has all the characteristics and responsibilities of a treaty ; but it has something more. It involves the delicate relations of a government within the orbit assigned to it; invites and necessitates the adoption of a course of action and policy which pledges a common faith to the due observance of nu merous obligations indispensable to the daily discharge of its functions. It is constantly contracting engagements to which every member of the league is bound, and which, being for the benefit of the whole, cannot be repudiated by one without inflicting a wrong sometimes a vital wrong upon the rest. In respect to a common treaty between two nations, it may be said, in a loose sense, that either party has a right to de clare that the treaty has been violated by the other ; but the othe.r has an equal right to deny the infraction. If they can not accommodate matters, the only resort for a settlement of ON THE REBELLION. 369 the difference is to war. To retire from a treaty is to give a lawful cause for war. There is no such thing known as a peaceable right to secede from a treaty, unless the treaty con tains an express stipulation to that effect. Such a right never results from the single fact of the absolute sovereignty of the parties. What foundation, then, is there for the assertion that, in a league, this sovereignty of the parties gives each this right ? The old Confederation which existed before the present Constitution, was strictly a league of States. It did not pre tend to be a nation. Yet nothing was more abhorrent to the ideas of the men who formed, and acted under, that Confeder ation, than this notion of a right existing in any member to secede from it, or in any manner to alter its terms but by the unanimous consent of all the members. The nature and force of the Confederate obligations on this point are well defined by Luther Martin in his address to the Legislature of Mary land, on his return from the Convention which formed the Constitution. Speaking of the old Confederation, he says : " That in forming our original Federal Government every member of that Government, that is, each State, expressly consented to it ; that it is a part of the compact made and entered into, in the most solemn manner, that there should be no dissolution or alteration of that Federal Government without the consent of every S+ate, the members of and parties to the original compact ; that, therefore, no alteration could be made by the consent of a part of these States, or by the consent of the inhabitants of a part of these States, which could either release the States so consenting from the obligation they are under to the other States, or which could in any manner be come obligatory upon those States that should not ratify such alterations." This argument was used by Mr. Martin in support of his opposition to the mode proposed by the Convention for the ratification of the Constitution by the concurrence of seven States ; and being used simply in the way of argument, was an appeal to the received opinion of that day in reference to 1 6* 370 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE the old Confederation, an opinion which, apart from his own high authority, was clearly a correct one. Now, it must be observed that the Articles of Confederation are as silent as the Constitution on the subject of secession. Mr. Martin s argument is a deduction from the nature of the compact or treaty of Confederation ; that, although the States were rec ognized in that compact as absolute sovereignties, they could not dissolve or alter the Government without the unanimous consent of the members in the league. Where was the right of secession if this view is a sound one ? The whole of Mr. Martin s address, which is an elaborate discussion on the prin ciples of the Constitution, is worthy of study in reference to this question. He was a harsh critic upon the labors of the Convention ; saw many defects in the Constitution which time has proved to be imaginary; made many prophecies of its malign influence upon the country which have never been ful filled ; complained of its nationality as pregnant with mischief to the States, and even went so far as to say, " we considered the system proposed to be the most complete, most abject sys tem of slavery that the wit of man ever devised under the pre tence of forming a Government of free States ;" yet, with all these evil portents looming upon his disturbed vision, it never occurred to him that there was lodged in this system a power which could in a moment shiver it into atoms, and thus dissi pate all these apprehensions of the terrible bondage to which he fancied these " Free States" were doomed. Indeed, it is impossible to read that address without perceiving, on every page, that the idea of secession never entered into his thoughts, and had never been entertained by the men of that day. It would have at once dispelled all his fears and answered half the objections he so anxiously urged against the work of his compatriots. The student of our history will find many testimonies in the records of our initiatory era, in addition to this of Mr. Martin, which will be equally conclusive to convince him that no man who had any part in the fabrication of the Constitu ON THE REBELLION. 371 tion, nor any portion of the public which anxiously watched the progress of that work, ever intimated an idea that a right to withdraw from the Union existed either by inference or grant -as a privilege left to or conferred upon the respective States. Upon that point the silence was universal and preg nant with meaning. It is very evident that generation re garded the compact as designed to be perpetual. They would not even agree, as may be seen in Mr. Madison s letter to a member of the New York Convention, to allow a State to make a conditional ratification, by way of experimental proba tion of the Constitution, before a final acceptance of it. It was to be perpetual ; they must take it so, or not at all, is the import of his direction. We have no difficulty in perceiving that the founders inter preted the ratification as an irrevocable surrender by each State of all the power required to be surrendered for the com mon benefit. And, as the Government was the compound re sult of State action and popular action, the surrender of power by the State was an act which was confirmed and rendered doubly irrevocable by the concurrent vote of the people of the whole of the States, who came in as a third party, binding themselves and their States to the compact, through their sev eral State Conventions. Out of this joint action between States and people grew A NATION, in which was skilfully and JDeautifully combined two sovereignties, the one the comple ment of the other, a national sovereignty supreme in the na tional sphere ; a State sovereignty supreme in the State sphere ; neither clashing with the other, but both together making up the whole sum of sovereignty which is essential to a complete nation. The States were clean shorn of every vestige of sovereignty in the circle allotted to the National Government ; and the National Government was, in like man ner, shorn of every vestige of sovereignty in the circle appro priated to the State government. They were complements to each other ; and the National Government has just as much right to abrogate the State power and release itself from its 372 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE obligations to the States, as the States have to abrogate the national power and release themselves from their obligations to the nation. This view of the mutual relations between the two authori ties distinctly defines national rights and State rights, which are equally clear, equally sacred, and equally guarded against encroachment from each other. It has not been my purpose to comment at large upon these principles in our Constitution, or to gather up the nu merous demonstrations of them which our early history affords. My chief object in this and the former letter was to show that the States and people of the United States have contracted obligations, by the compact of the Constitution, which are to tally irreconcilable with the asserted right of secession ; that, with the impediment of this right, the harmonious and even the most indispensable performance of the functions of our Government would become impossible, and that the founda tion of the right, as asserted by its advocates, has no support in the views entertained by the founders, or in the institutes of national law. LETTER V. REVOLUTION. OCTOBER, 1863. Notwithstanding the pretence set up by the movers of this great disorder in the country, their scheme is nothing more nor less than an attempt to subvert the Government by a revolu tion. It suited their purpose to claim it as the exercise of a peaceful right of secession. We perceive many obvious motives of policy to suggest to them this expedient. If they could persuade the country that the States were merely asserting a right which belonged to them as members of the Union, they would, to the extent of that persuasion, be able to confront the Government with the ON THE REBELLION. 373 charge of denying to them their admitted privileges under the Constitution. Whether wise or not in seceding from the Un ion, would be a question upon which people might differ ; but the right would not be controverted. If they could impress the world with this opinion, then it would follow that to resist them would be adjudged by the world to be a simple and in excusable act of aggression. The Government would be re garded as the assailant, and they would be the injured party. They might, with this advantage, appeal to the sympathies of mankind as a people oppressed by unlawful force, and assume the part of patriots contending for their dearest rights. They would present themselves to the tribunal of public judgment as legitimate, independent States, having a claim, by the law of nations, to immediate recognition by all other Powers ; not States struggling in the throes of revolution to make them selves free, but States free in their antecedent life, and now, by virtue of the common fundamental law, free from all alli ance with their late associates, self-controlling and in full or ganization as nations from the moment they severed their con nection with the Union. In such an aspect of their case, the law which controls the policy of nations, on the question of recognizing a people who revolt against their rulers, would have no application. The question would not arise, "Are these people able to detach themselves from the Government that ruled them, and to maintain their attempted nationality by their own strength ?" but it would be, with all the outside world, " What right have we to refuse to acknowledge the ex istence of a body politic which, by the organic law of the Con federacy to which it was once attached, has become an inde pendent nation, through the appointed form of a declaration of its own will to be so ?" The admission of this principle annuls the whole law of treason in respect to the retiring State. It is no longer under the jurisdiction of the common Government. Its people owe no allegiance to that Govern ment; they have, in a moment, become aliens. If war be made upon them, it is a war of established belligerents; they 374 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE are alien enemies to each other ; and the party that begins the war must find its justification in the ordinary code of nations applicable to the disputes between foreign Powers. The mere act of separation, being in pursuance of an actual right, is no just cause for war. The retiring party has committed no of fence. All he asks is, " Let us alone." This was the con venient theory upon which the fomenters of this commotion ostensibly commenced their operations. According to this theory there could be no rebellion, and, of course, no revolu tion. The Governments of the States and of the Union were only developing their future in the due process of the normal law of their construction ; falling to pieces, it is true, but fall ing to pieces in pursuance of the design and in the manner prescribed by the authors of the Constitution. This is the rationale of their action, as explained in the offi cial expositions of the government set up in the revolting States, and which is urged, with eager reiteration, upon the cabinets of Europe. As yet they have met no acknowledg ment of their claim. The cabinets persist in regarding the war as rebellion and its aim revolution. Foreign Powers, therefore, we may infer, do not accept the doctrine of seces sion. It is true, some foreign statesmen, who are well-wishers to the downfall of the great American Republic, and who de light to encourage any plot which may compass so happy an end, give, now and then, a stimulating hint of their favorable conviction on this "point ; but no nation has yet been so hardy as to make it a ground for interference in our quarrel. They, one and all, subject the question of intervention to the test afforded by national law and usage as applied to the case of revolting fractions of a State. There being no right of secession, as I have demonstrated in my last two letters, the whole movement to sever the Union is simply an enterprise of revolution. No proclamation of a more lawful foundation for it, no pretension of a different pur pose contemplated by its leaders, no protestation of innocence of treasonable design, by the thousands who have taken up ON THE REBELLION. 375 arms, or of the multitudes of men and women who afford ma terial aid and comfort to the movement, or encourage it by their sympathy, can alter its nature. The object aimed at is revolution, and the means are rebellion. The champions of the cause are rebels. If the rebellion be without such justifi cation as the moral law sanctions, then it is one of the black est of crimes ; the rebels are traitors, and they justly incur the penalty of treason. If, on the other hand, there be such justi fication for an effort to subvert the Government as is recog nized in the moral code of the most enlightened nations, the rebellion is without guilt, and the rebel, notwithstanding the offence which the law may impute to him, is untainted by the crime of a traitor. It is the Government, in that case, that betrays, and the citizen lawfully resists. This is a brief summary or outline of the ethics of rebel lion, as expounded by the most liberal jurists of this age, and as universally accepted in our country. There is no right we are less disposed to deny than that of revolution. It is an in stinct of American society to sympathize with the revolt of a people against their rulers. We are perhaps too apt to do so from an a priori presumption that every government oppresses somebody, and that people never revolt without good cause. There is a popular attraction in the idea of fighting for " our rights," a phrase often more alluring to a love of adventure than susceptible of definition. I have no doubt that the South ern armies are filled by the influence of this sentiment. Rash and thoughtless young men, who have never paused a moment to inquire into the merits to the cause, have rushed into rebel lion simply because it was rebellion. Men of riper years have thrown themselves into it, with that traditionary idea that rev olution itself is a glorious incident, and that it is heroic to sus tain it. I think this trait of our national character will dis close the secret of much of that enthusiasm which has spread over the South and brought the rebellion into favor with many worthy men who, to this day, are unable to give an intelligible account of the motives which seduce 1 them into the conflict. 3Y6 LETTERS OF ME. AMBEOSE ** I think it will explain the phenomena of epauletted bishops and priests in jackboots, deserting their vineyards to swagger in the camp. I think it will satisfactorily solve the riddle of the remarkable virulence with which the women on that side scream out their joy at every wound that is inflicted upon their country. Rebellion has become the fashion in that gentle world, and like another fashion there, is utterly heedless of the uncleanness into which it dips its skirts. Passing by these illusions or mere stimulants of temper which have driven so many to the compromise of their loyalty, I propose to explore the real motives, as far as they are attain able, that have led meri of influence and capacity to attempt so bold and desperate an enterprise as the overthrow of the Gov ernment. In looking for these motives, we should expect to find ei ther, on the one side, some oppressive feature in our Constitu tion or some inveterate and incurable evil in its administra tion ; or, on the other, some mistaken conception of injury resulting from Government, some intolerable anomaly of so cial life only imagined curable by separation ; or, in the ab sence of inducements as honest as these, some depravity of personal ambition daring enough to meditate the destruction of the State in order to compass its ends. I remark, in clear ing the way for this inquiry, that the first man is yet to be found, North or South, who, in the way of excuse for rebellion, has alleged that he has suffered wrong from a solitary act of this Government. No man has been so bold as to affirm that there is a single statute in the national code, a single decree of the Executive ; that there is any treaty, or any judicial de cision of the national judicature, which has ever given offence to a Southern citizen or afforded any fair ground of complaint to a Southern State, at the date at which this rebellion was in augurated. It does not abate the truth of this assertion to say that there have been, in the seventy years experience of the Union, various questions of policy broached and determined, upon which political parties have differed ; that laws have ON THE REBELLION. 377 been passed, treaties made and Executive proceedings adopt ed, which roused the opposition of parties, both in the North and the South. These are but the regular and anticipated incidents of our popular government, and, indeed, manifest the healthful freedom of opinion by which alone all good gov ernments are preserved. These divisions of opinion were gen eral, pervading the whole country, and distinctive of no sec tion. What I mean to affirm is, that no legislation ever tran scended the natural and proper limits prescribed to the legiti mate action of the Government in determining and shaping the public policy ; that nothing has been done but in accordance with the power given by the Constitution, and what the Con stitution contemplated as the appropriate office of legislation. There were tariffs enacted, there were laws prohibiting and laws allowing slavery in the Territories, internal improvement and national-bank laws, upon all of which there were various dissenting opinions and frequent political conflict ; but all this legislation was founded upon precedent established in the ear liest age of the Government and continued to the latest ; and, what is of some insignificance in this view, these laws were passed during the long period in which the Government was mainly directed under the control of Southern votes. No sensible statesman could find in such legislation an honest ground for rebellion. They were acts of administration, change able at the will of the people. It would be as absurd as wick ed to make them the pretext for overthrowing the Govern ment. Indeed, we have the testimony of the rebels themselves that the structure of the Government afforded them no cause of complaint ; for they immediately adopted the same Constitu tion, with some few modifications, as the framework of their own Confederacy. Among these modifications they did not even incorporate that which might be regarded as descriptive of the peculiar demand of the revolution, an expressed affirmation of the right of secession. If we may infer any thing from their reticence on this point, it is that they were not willing to ex- 378 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE pose their own Confederacy to the blows of the same weapon which they found had such facile power to destroy that they were casting off. They, at least, were willing to leave an ex pressed right of secession open to future advisement, and allow the question, in the mean time, to float upon the varying tide of construction. I venture to prophecy that as their expe rience grows older, and their sovereign harmonies are more and more tested, they will be less and less inclined to honor the doctrine with a clause in their Constitution. Certainly we may infer from this omission that the failure of our Constitu tion to recognize this right does not present the gravamen for which they have plunged the country into rebellion. I would not charge that numerous body of gentlemen whom I have referred to in a former letter as the long and persistent denoun cers of secession as treason with a vagary so extravagant as that. As the matter stands now, it is evident that the rebel Convention at Montgomery were not fully prepared to vindi cate their zeal in their professed faith, by testifying to it in their works when the opportunity for the first time was present ed to them. Notwithstanding these few alterations, the Government re jected and the Government adopted are so entirely the same in all their leading features and minor details, and especially so identical in their capacities for good or evil administration, that it is very clear this revolution was not inaugurated to get rid of any existing grievance or tyrannical authority resulting from the Constitution of the United States. We are left, then, to seek in the administration of the Gov ernment, the source of the differences which, it is supposed, could only be satisfactorily adjusted by a dissolution of the Union. Upon this point I might remark, in passing, that it would take a very strong case of wrongs inflicted by the administra tion of a Government whose administration is changeable at brief periods by the act of the people themselves, and always under the control of popular representation in which the whole ON THE EEBELLION. 379 nation has a voice, it would be necessary to make a very strong case of continued and persevering oppression, through such an administration, to justify a resort to the terrible process of relief found in civil war. When we ask the question, " Has the South been impelled to adept this extreme remedy of revolution, by the galling tyr anny practised upon it through years of unmitigated suffering by the oppressive temper of the majority, exhibited in a con stant course of hostile administration ?" we have an answer in the fact, that from the 4th of March, 1789, until the 4th of March, 1861, the administration of public affairs has been al most wholly in Southern hands. We have had, during that period, fifteen Presidents, of which nine were native Southern men, three natives of New England, two of New York, and one of Pennsylvania ; of those which were not natives of the Slave States three were Demo crats, of whom the South was wont to boast as " Northern men with Southern principles," and were distinctly chosen and elect ed by Southern influence ; of the remaining three two were Whigs, distinguished for their equitable administration and ir reproachable performance of their duty, in which they received the efficient support of the whole Whig party of the South. The only President, in all that space of seventy-two years, who might be plausibly charged with a Northern bias in his ad ministration was the elder Adams, the companion of Washing ton, and the incumbent of the Presidential office for but one term, at the close of the last century. It may be also remarked, that from the 4th of March, 1801, when it may be said that parties became distinctively organized, down to the 4th of March, 1861, a period of sixty years, the Government was ad ministered by Southern Presidents for forty-one years, and by Presidents born in the Free States nineteen years. During the whole of this latter period of sixty years the representation in both Houses of Congress is to be noted for a preponder ance of Southern influence in the control of the policy of Gov ernment maintained, in part, through the numerical strength 380 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE * . of the Southern vote, and, still more decisively, by the party predilections of the Democratic members. It is vain, therefore, in the view of these facts, to suppose that this rebellion can pretend to any justifiable cause arising out of the ordinary, legitimate, and habitual administration of the Government. Where, then, shall we seek for that bead-roll of wrongs which the enlightened justice of mankind in this age demands from every people who meditate a recourse of arms against es tablished authority ? What is the provocation which may be rightfully pleaded in the great forum of national judgment, still more, before the awful tribunal of Heaven, for this dreadful as sault upon the social order, yea, upon the very existence of the grandest and most prosperous of Commonwealths ? Even to this day we have seen no clear and intelligible proc lamation of the real motives which impelled this outbreak. Speculation, both here and in Europe, gropes blindly through a maze of conjectures to make a plausible theory for this ex traordinary phenomenon. Prizes are offered for essays to ex plain it. The gravest and the lightest reasons are assigned to it. It is the terrible plague spot of slavery ; it is the trivial dis comfort of incompatible temper ; it is commercial tariffs; nav igation laws ; unequal distribution of patronage ; disappointed ambition ; provincial antipathies ; " quot homines tot sententice" Why is there not some solemn and earnest State paper put forth, in " decent respect for the opinions of mankind," which shall solve these doubts ? We have had more than one osten tatious attempt of this kind, but they all fail to rise to the dig nity of an excuse. They do not agree with each other. They present no consistent specific statement of injuries inflicted upon the South by the Government, to which the whole people in revolt can refer as their defence for taking up arms, or which sensible men might not be ashamed to avow as a justi fiable motive for revolution. We find it hard to reconcile the inauguration of a rebellion of such magnitude as this, with our own estimate of the insuf- ON THE REBELLION. 381 ficiency of the excuse for it, and our previous knowledge of the respectability, both in character and intelligence, of many of the individuals concerned in getting it up. We make every allowance for pride and prejudice, for ambition, for excitability of temper, for extravagance of political theory, and all the other influences which may disturb an honest judgment, but there still remains the problem, Why did men of ordinary ability and forethought, to say nothing of men of larger scope, enter upon an adventure of such fearful import as this ? The ques tion has often been asked, Have they presented any grievance which a dissolution of the Union would remove ; in fact, not make worse ? The inadequacy of the reasons given for the in stalment of this momentous struggle would compel us to be lieve, if we did not, from our own observation of events, know it before, that the ostensible causes are not the real ones, and that we must seek elsewhere for the true exposition of the move ment. We feel no surprise at the rapid spread of the rebellion through the South, after it was once set on foot. However much we may lament the width and tenacity of its grasp, and* the fatal aberration into which it has drawn many estimable persons, among whom we recognize friends we shall ever think of with regret, we cannot but regard their defection as the nat ural sequence of the great primal wrong which brought them into such a temptation, and we shall never abandon the hope that the same facility of yielding which carried them astray, will be equally apt, when the occasion may serve, to bring them back. I have hinted, in a former letter, at the category in which they are placed. I know that it is the nature of all rebellion to be constantly making a new case for its reinforce ment ; and it scarcely fails to happen, that the multitudes who are swept into its train are unable to resist the motives they find for complicity presented to them in the disorders which the violence of war, the emergencies of State, and the inevita ble invasions of personal comfort and private right bring upon themselves or the communities in which they live. As passion 382 LETTERS OF MB. AMBROSE rises reason subsides, and the minds of excitable men become all aglow with the indignation of present griefs. It is enough for them that injuries which a calm reflection would show them to be the necessary and natural concomitants of civil commotion, and for which, therefore, the authors of the com motion themselves are responsible are perpetrated within their view ; it is enough for them that the Government, while reeling under the blows of the rebellion; resorts to its highest prerogative of defence, and wields an unaccustomed power against the treason that strikes at its life ; they are filled with resentment at the present calamity, and at the use of force to conquer revolt, and do not pause to consider the awful crime which hurls these disasters upon society, nor the sacred duty which rebellion casts upon the Government to preserve itself from destruction. Man grows selfish when terrors surround him, and the first instinct, even of the brave, is to fly to the protection of their friends before they will lift an arm for their country. This is natural to the common herd of mankind. It is only from the truly heroic, from those who possess that rare wisdom which discerns the path of duty with vision undis turbed by passion or affection, and who have the courage to follow it, we may expect an example of that noblest patriotism which accounts our country dearer than all other human bless ings, and its service only subordinate to that we owe our Cre ator. We are not surprised, therefore, that the thoughtless, the ignorant, or the impulsive members of an excited commu nity lose sight of the grandeur of a national cause and become the assertors and champions of the meaner but more intelligi ble quarrel of the neighborhood, the district, or the section. Unhappily it is so ordained that the fate of empire does not rest in the hands of the wise, the good, and the valiant, with out a counterpoise, more or less hurtful, from the foolish, the vicious, and the weak. It is not from this crowd of followers in the track of revo lution that we may hope to procure an intelligible exposition of its origin or its aims. They can only give us their own per- ON THE REBELLION. 383 sonal aggravations, or, at best, the delusions which have kin dled their enthusiasm and bewildered their reason. But from those who first conceived the design and gave it headway, and who still assume to shape and direct its progress, we have to exact a more rigorous responsibility, and hold them accounta ble to public judgment, if they can offer no adequate and up right justification for the desolation they have cast into the bosom of the country, and for the terrible issues of the conflict. They have not yet done so. That their enterprise admits of no such defence I shall endeavor to show in the further prose cution of this inquiry. LETTER VI. REVOLUTION. OCTOBEK, 1863. The aspiration of Southern ambition, which has reached to the climax of rebellion, was not the growth of a month or a year. Those who have watched the course of public events, and noted the development of opinion in the South for years past, have seen many signs of the coming peril ; and, if the country was not prepared for it, it was not for want of an oc casional warning. Everybody knew there were restless spirits in the South who would rejoice in the opportunity to destroy the Union, and that these were endeavoring to create a sec tional sentiment that might favor the accomplishment of their wish. But the common faith of the country in the patriotism of the people of the South, and the profound conviction of the whole North, and we may say also, of the larger part of the Southern communities, that no motive existed which could possibly stir up the people of any State to the mad enterprise of assailing the integrity of the Union, dispelled every appre hension on this score. The public generally regarded the danger as a chimera. Even the Government, which ought to have been distrustful enough to put itself on guard, seemed to LETTERS OF MB. AMBROSE be utterly unconscious of the gathering trouble. Never was a country taken so much at unawares. The year 1860 was one of great prosperity. The nation exhibited something more than its customary light-hearted- ness, and had risen into a tone of hilarity from the peculiar excitements of the year. The spring was occupied with cele brations of the advent of the Japanese Embassy, which signal ized the enlargement of our commerce with the East, and au tumn was filled with pageants to welcome the heir of the Brit ish throne, whose visit was regarded as an event of national congratulation that promised long peace and happy fellowship with the world, a token of new strength and greater influence to the Republic. It was a year distinguished by public dem onstrations of faith and hope in the future destiny of the coun try. Few persons were willing to believe, or allowed them selves to think, that, while we were thus increasing the popu larity of the nation abroad, and inaugurating an era of remark able promise to the advantage of our foreign and domestic in terests, there was any considerable party among us who could harbor the parricidal design of crushing these brilliant hopes in the destruction of the country itself, or that the band of po litical agitators, to whom the public was accustomed to impute such a design, could so infatuate their followers as to pre vail with them to attempt it. It was in this state of confident security, and in the very midst of these peaceful manifesta tions, that the storm broke upon the country. Notwithstanding this dissonance between the tone of public feeling at that time, and the terrific incident which grated upon it with such inopportune discord, the rebellion came as a predestined feat. The year, the month, almost the week of its explosion, had been determined in councils held long before, and the plot broke into action at its appointed time, to surprise and discomfit, with a sudden shock, the peaceful tem per of the Government and its friends. It was pre-ordained that the Presidential Election of 1860 should supply the occasion and the day, though it did not supply ON THE REBELLION. 385 the motive for this wicked attempt against the life of the nation. Let us endeavor to extract from the history of the times, and from our own knowledge of the course of events, what we can find to explain the inducements that moved the actors in this terrible tragedy. It has grown to be an almost universally accepted fact, on the northern side of Mason and Dixon s line, that this rebel lion owes its origin simply to a sense of danger to the institu tion of slavery aroused in the Southern mind by the political agitations of the question of its value, which have engrossed so much of the public attention during the last thirty years ; and that, to avert this danger, the South had resolved upon separation from the North. I think this view of the origin of our troubles much too narrow. Slavery, of itself and for itself, is not the cause of the rebellion. I do not believe that there was one intelligent, leading, and thinking man in the South, when this rebellion broke out, who imagined that slavery was in any kind of danger either from the action of the National Government or the State Governments ; nor that it could be successfully assailed by the hostility that was exhibited against it in the public or private opinion of Northern society. I think that Southern statesmen were and are perfectly convinced that the Government of the United States, embracing both National and State organizations, afforded an impregnable security to the institution of slavery which no power on this continent, in its lawful course of administration, could disturb : and, more over, that the guarantees which these organizations combined offer to that institution are not only entirely adequate to its protection, but are such as no government ever before supplied, and such, also, as no government, of the same scope of juris diction and power, would ever again agree to make. It is the merest sham and make-believe for any Southern man to pre tend that the institution of slavery was ever brought into peril before this rebellion exposed it to the dangers that now sur- 386 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE round it. I can hardly suppose that any man of sense in the South could believe otherwise than that a war, once provoked between the States, would be the only effective agency which could destroy or impair it against the will and without the co-operation of the Slave States themselves. That the slave interest has been domineering and aggress ive in its endeavor to control the administration of the public affairs of the Union, is a fact of common observation ; and that it has been exceedingly reluctant to part with this power of control, as the gradually increasing strength of its antago nist element in the nation made it apparent that it must soon do, is equally true. If we add to these considerations the influence of slavery upon the character, habits, and social life of the ruling class of Southern citizens, we may perceive the degree and extent in which it may be regarded as the causa causans of the rebellion, in the minds of certain ambitious men who assumed to direct Southern opinion, and who, acting in concert, plotted and executed this great act of treason. It is, at the same time, true that slavery may be reckoned as the immediate cause of the war, in the estimate of a very considerable portion of the Southern people. Danger to the security of slave property furnished a taking watchword to a large and influential class of these. The phantom of negro equality, which haunts the imagination of the lower stratum of Southern society, furnished another not less potent for mis chief. These topics were adroitly handled to excite the pas sions and alarm the fears of both the upper and under sec tions of these impressible communities, and were found very effective in mustering men into the ranks of revolt. They were discussed as popular motives to rebellion, and used to give it a plausible justification. They supplied a ready argu ment adapted to the prejudice or mental capacity of the sev eral parties to whom it was addressed, and they especially served to familiarize the people with the thought of breaking up the Union. These agitations of the slave question had something of ON THE REBELLION. 387 the same effect upon portions of the people of the North ; for the aversion to the Union was not alone harbored in the South. I have no doubt that the extreme opinions on this subject, preached and written by a sect in New England, had a most pernicious influence irr extending the thought of disso lution through the South. There was an equal fanaticism on both sides, quite as evident in favor of slavery in one section as against it in the other. Secessionists and abolitionists, in the ultra phases of their respective demands, were in full accord as to the ultimate remedy of the grievances they imagined themselves to suffer. It was curious to see how, in ascending the gamut of their opposite extravagances, the two parties kept pace with each other on the scale, of which the highest note on each side was disunion. Both North and South were, at the beginning, in harmony in admitting slavery to be a social evil which was to be considerately dealt with and abandoned when that could be done without injury to existing interests. From this point Southern enthusiasts diverged in one direction, Northern in another. With one, slavery rose to be asserted successively as a harmless utility, as a blessing, a divine institution, and, finally, as " the corner stone rejected by the builders," upon which a new dynasty was to be constructed, and our old cherished Union to be dashed into fragments. With the other, slavery, passing through equal grades, was declared to be a disgrace ; a great national sin ; a special curse of Heaven ; and, at last, a stigma that made the Union " a covenant of hell," and which, there fore, should be shattered to atoms to give place to another order of polity. The two opposite lines thus converged in the same point, that of dissolution. This is the extreme boundary to which a passionate monomania conducted the agitations of thirty years of the subject of slavery. The irri tation produced by this persevering and angry reverberation of the question, from side to side, undoubtedly prepared the people of the South for the explosion of 1860, and- equally prepared the people of the North for a prompt resentment 388 LETTEES OF MK. AMBROSE against it, and thus misled the popular opinion on both sides to regard the slavery question as the immediate source of the attempt at revolution. But the contrivers, the heads and leaders of the scheme, had a much deeper purpose than the removal of any imagined danger to the security of the insti tution. They took advantage of the common sensibility of their people on this subject to aid them in a design of much wider import. It is only necessary to note the solicitude with which Southern politicians of the last and present generation have contemplated the invasion of their supremacy in the Govern ment, and the importunate zeal with which they have insisted upon preserving an equilibrium between Free and Slave States, meaning by that the preponderance of Southern in fluence, to be convinced that the perpetuity of their control of the Administration has been the leading idea of their policy. The threat of disunion has been the customary per suasion by which they have, from time to time, endeavored to subdue the first symptoms of disaffection to their ascendency. This had become the familiar terror of every Presidential can vass since the great flurry of Nullification in 1832, and, in fact, its frequency had made it so stale, that when, at last, the danger was really imminent, the country was incredulous of the event, as much from derision of the threat as a worn-out trick, as from the common conviction that no cause had arisen to provoke it. Looking at the various pretexts upon which, as occasion prompted, this disunion was threatened, the tariff, the navi gation laws, the distribution of patronage, the Texas question, the admission of California, the Kansas organization, the Territories, all of which have been used in turn by the Cotton States to frighten the nation with the danger of rupture, we have in these the most perspicuous guide to the true motives of the breach of 1861. The fact was then at last demon strated, that the hour was at hand when other interests in the country were to have a hearing and an influence, and that the ON THE REBELLION. 389 majority of the nation meant to govern it ; that the South must take its due and proper place in the Union and relin quish its ambition of undivided empire. That long-feared and long warded-off day had come, and with it came the first real, unfeigned, absolute purpose of the partisan politicians of the Southern States in combination, to separate the South from the North, and to attempt to build up a power at home, in which Southern politics and Southern ambition should have undisputed sway. The Union was enjoyed as long as it min istered to the ascendency of the Planting States, but was to be cast off as soon as the nation reached that epoch in its progress at which it was able to release itself from the thral dom of sectional control, and to regulate its policy in accord ance with the demands of the general welfare. Never was that selfishness which is the characteristic sin of sectional politicians, more offensively demonstrated than in the alacrity with which the prominent men of these Planting States I mean especially to designate, by this term, that re gion which is devoted to the production of cotton, rice, and su gar combined to destroy the unity, as they hoped, the strength, and even the very existence, of this nation, at the first moment when the opportunity promised them a chance of success. Their cool repudiation, not only of the obligations of honora ble citizenship, but also of the simple gratitude due to a com monwealth of brethren of the same family, which had watched over them in their days of weakness, and nursed them into the full vigor of manhood, and which had, moreover, conferred upon them all the political importance they had ever attained, this act will stand forever prominent in the history of this sad time, as the darkest blot the rebellion will leave upon the char acter of its most conspicuous contrivers and agents. Think of the trivial pretences and the positive treachery of those States purchased, created, and reared by the Union, Florida, Loui siana, Texas, Arkansas ! Think of the good example, the good faith, and the nice sense of honor of those older States which persuaded these to strike at the heart of the beneficent 390 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE parent who had given them existence, protection, and a heri tage of matchless prosperity ! Think of the obligations which these States owe to the Union, and then inquire into the real motives which tempted them to bring down upon the nation the terrible calamity of civil war ! We shall look in vain, as I have before remarked, for this motive in any right denied the States by the National Govern ment, or any privilege withheld which State or individual citi zen might lawfully or reasonably demand. But, supposing there were some wrong inflicted by the Gov ernment, in the course of its administration, upon one or more of these States, and to put the case of opposition upon its strongest ground supposing the right of secession to be ac knowledged as the lawful resort of a State, certainly we may say, in view of the special compact of the Constitution, and of the plighted faith of the people of every State to stand to and abide by all the responsibilities and duties created by the common National Government, every consideration of justice, as well as of propriety and self-respect, would impose upon the complaining party the necessity of making a deliberate and friendly appeal to the rest of the nation for redress through the means provided by law. How much more imperative is the obligation of such appeal when no right of secession is con tained in the compact, and when the proceeding, unless sanc tioned by the general consent of the nation, could only be classed in the category of revolution ! To make a decent case of justification for revolution, every tribunal of moral law or en lightened opinion would hold that, as a preliminary fact, that consent should be asked and refused ; and, moreover, that the insurgent party should be able to show such a violation of com pact by the offending government, as to produce intolerable oppression for which no remedy was to be found but that of separation. Now, nothing is more clear than that neither of these con ditions existed. There was no consent sought for or expected, but, on the contrary, a haste in rushing into rebellion, which ON THE REBELLION. 391 one might almost believe was intended to prevent the risk of either consent or conciliation. There was no intolerable oppression, or, indeed, oppression of any kind. The utmost point to which any mover of the se dition went, was to affirm that it was feared there might be some oppression hereafter,- though that was not very intelligi bly made out in the result of the Presidential election, which proved the successful party to be in a minority of the whole vote of the country. We had heard, it is true, a great deal about the iniquity of import duties and protection of domes tic industry, but these were only the common resources of all Governments, and, indeed, when it concerned Southern in terests, were the special requisitions of Southern policy ; as, for example, in the invariable demand from the South for the protection of sugar and cotton, to say nothing of the protection insisted upon by the South for our early cotton manufacture. We had heard a complaint that the bounty of the Govern ment had fallen in stinted measure upon the South in the ex penditures of the revenue ; but the fact was that the public treasure was applied in that section to the establishment of forts, arsenals, navy-yards, hospitals, custom-houses, mints, and other public structures, quite as liberally as they were needed, and certainly without any idea of unjust discrimination - } while, in addition to these expenditures, enormous amounts, far great er than were appropriated to any other section, were expended in the purchase and defence of Southern territory. We had heard a great deal said about the injustice of Con gress in refusing to allow the extension of slavery into the ter ritories north of the Compromise line ; indeed, this was mag nified, at last, into the chief provocation to the war. But quite apart from the political folly and the moral atrocity of planting slavery afresh, and with premeditated design, in free communi ties, it is to be remarked as a very notable fact, in connection with this as a ground of quarrel, that the Missouri Compro mise was, itself, a Southern measure, and its passage hailed 392 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE throughout the South as a signal victory. It is also worthy of note, that, from the beginning of the Government, Southern statesmen have refused to allow slavery to go north of that line, 36 30 , in the Territories ; and that the Northwestern Terri tory, embracing all the Western States north of the line, was mads inviolably free soil by the demand of Virginia, through Mr. Jefferson, and by the support of Southern votes. We may pursue this inquiry through all the history of the past, and we shall find that all these topics of complaint against the Government, which have furnished themes for popular dis course and irritation of the Southern mind, and which, for more than a quarter of a century, have been urged as incentives to disunion, are but pretexts employed as lures to entrap the ig norant, or as devices to stimulate the sedition of men who wel come any thing that may give plausibility to a foregone purpose of revolt. The pursuit of independence by these confederated States has a very different aim from the redress of such shallow griefs as these. Whoever shall be able hereafter to reveal the secret history of those various conclaves which have held counsel on the re peated attempts to invade and conquer, or, as the phrase was, liberate Cuba j whoever shall unfold the schemes of seiz ing Nicaragua, of aiding revolution in Mexico, of possessing Sonora, will make some pretty sure advances in disclosing the true pathway to the sources of this rebellion. The organiza tion of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and their spread over the country ; their meetings and transactions j who managed them and set them on to do their appointed work, whoever shall penetrate into the midnight which veiled this order from view, will also open an authentic chapter in the history of this outbreak. There was a great scheme of dominion in this plot. The fancy of certain Southern politicians was dazed with a vision of Empire. Years have been rolling on while this brilliant scheme was maturing in their private councils, and at intervals ON THE REBELLION. 393 startling the nation by some unexpected eruption. The de sign, which lay too deep in darkness to be penetrated by the uninitiated, occasionally rose to the surface in some bold and rash adventure, which either the vigilance of Government, or the imperfect means of success which the necessity of conceal ment imposed upon it, rendered abortive. The Cuban expedi- itions miscarried ; the Sonora failed ; the Nicaragua forays were defeated, all these chiefly by the careful watch of the Government. Large sums of money were squandered in these fruitless adventures, and many lives were lost. Worse than these mishaps, eager hopes were disappointed and long indul ged dreams dissipated. It was found that the Union was in the way ; that the National Government was the impediment ; and that as long as the South was bound to obey that Govern ment, these cherished schemes would be always certain to mis carry. This experience turned the hostility of thwarted ambi tion against the Union, and directed the thoughts of these agents of mischief towards its destruction. Then came the next movement. There is, I think, a bet ter foundation than mere rumor for saying that overtures were made, before the rebellion broke out, to the Emperor of the French for support and patronage in the scheme ; that a very alluring picture was presented to him of a great Southern Con federacy, to embrace the land of cotton, of sugar, of coffee, of the most precious tobaccoes, and of the choicest fruits, of the most valuable timber, and the richest mines, compre hending the Gulf States, Cuba, St. Domingo, and other islands, Mexico, Central America, and perhaps reaching even beyond into the borders of South America, a great tropical and semi-tropical paradise of unbounded affluence of product, se cured by an impregnable monopoly created by Nature. This large domain was to be organized into one confederate Govern ment, and provided with the cheapest and most docile and submissive of all labor ; its lands were to be parcelled into principalities, and landlords were to revel in the riches of Alad din s lamp. This was the grand idea which the Emperor was 394 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE solicited to patronize with his protection, for which he was to be repaid in treaty arrangements, by which France should enjoy a free trade in the products of French industry, and precedence in gathering the first fruits of all this wealth of culture. Certainly a very dazzling lure this, to the good will of the Emperor ! It is said the Emperor was quite captivated with the first view of this brilliant project, but on riper deliberation was brought to a pause. The scheme, he discovered, stood on one leg : the whole structure rested on slavery, which was much too ricketty a support to win favor in this nineteenth century with the shrewdest of European statesmen. The plot was " too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition." The structure might last a few years, but very soon it would tumble down and come to nought. And so, it is whispered, the Emperor declined the venture. This is a bit of secret history which time may or may not verify. From some ink lings of that day which escaped into open air, I believe it true. We heard various boastings, in the summer of 1860, of French support to the threatened separation, and there were agents in Europe negotiating for it. During all that prelimi nary period there was a great deal said in the South about re viving the slave-trade. When the Emperor refused, this was suddenly dropped and England was then looked to as the ally in the coming revolt. Abolition England was to be won by another strategy. The Montgomery Convention asserted a clause in the Confederate Constitution forbidding the slave- trade, and, oddly enough for a government founded on the central idea of slavery, the commissioners who represented it in England were authorized to assure the British Minister that it was really the old Government which was fighting to perpetuate slavery, while the new one was only seeking free trade ; thereby gently insinuating a disinterested indifference on the slave question, which might ultimately come into full accord with England on that subject. These revelations stand in strange contrast with the popular theme that has ON THE REBELLION. 395 rushed so many into the rebellion. As the matter now rests, the rebel Government has quite platform enough to be as pro- slavery or as anti-slavery as its European negotiations may require ; and if these should utterly fail, there is nothing in the constitutional provision to interrupt the African slave-trade a single day. For what is that provision worth in a region where neither courts nor juries would execute the law ? While this grand idea of tropical extension was seething in the brain of the leaders, and their hopes of fruition were vivid, the plan was to confine the revolt to the Cotton States, or, at least, to give the Border States a very inferior rule in the programme. They might come in when all was adjusted, but were to have no share in the primary organization. Every one remembers how these Border States were flouted in the beginning, and told they were not fit to be consulted, and that the only advantage they could bring to the Southern Con federacy was that of serving as a frontier to prevent the escape of slaves. But when the original plan was found to be a fail ure, the views of the managers were changed ; the Border States became indispensable to any hope of success, and the most active agencies of persuasion, force and fraud were set in mt)- tion to bring them in. How mournfully did it strike upon the heart of the nation when Virginia, in the lead of this career of submission, sank to the humiliation of pocketing the affront that had been put upon her, and consented to accept a position which nothing but the weakness of her new comrades induced them to allow her ! Since the hope of this broader dominion has come to an end, the rebellion is still persistently pursued for the accom plishment of its secondary objects. There is still, doubtless, some residuary expectation that, even without foreign patron age in the event of success, this desire of extension of territo ry may in time be gratified ; but it is no longer the chief ob ject of pursuit. The pride of the South, its resentment, its rage, are all now enlisted in pushing forward to whatever consumma tion they may imagine, to be attainable. They now insist on 396 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE independence from the very hatred their disappointments have engendered. But they seek it, too, as the only method left for the maintenance of that class domination which they have ever enjoyed, and which they are now unwilling to surrender. LETTER VII. REBELLION. JANUAKY, 1864. In the preceding letters I have had occasion to say much of Secession and Revolution, and to show the different catego ries in which they respectively place the war waged by the South. It requires no great insight to perceive the relation which these two ideas, considered as motives of conduct, have to the ques tion of mere right and wrong in this conflict. In that view they have a notable significance, and stand very wide apart. I recur to them now to make some remarks on that point, and to note the alternate use the partisans of the South have made of these two topics as persuasives in aid of their project to de stroy the Union. By the opportune use of both, as occasion favored, they have increased the popularity of their cause. They would have failed if they had been compelled to present it to their people singly, upon either of the two. Neither secession alone, nor revolution alone, would have found that undivided support which is essential to success. In that storm of excitement raised by their chiefs at the beginning of the strife, and in the flurry of that vainglorious, and, I might say, insolent spirit of defiance, that contemptuous disparagement of the North as a selfish, vulgar, and craven people, over whom they promised an easy victory and a short war, the Southern masses were hurried along into the irrevocable step of rebellion. Few stop ped to weigh the excuse for such a step, but listened with wil ling ear to every pretext, however false or feeble, in its justifi- ON THE REBELLION. 97 cation, which partisanship or political bigotry could suggest. The multitude were incapable of any accurate or conscientious opinion on the subject ; all were anxious to take a quick part in the coming fray, not doubting for a moment that the pre-or dained feat was to be accomplished with little more expendi ture of means than the show of force and a swaggering boast of certain triumph. Thus it came that we saw the instant ex hibition of that martial array, which astonished the world by its magnitude and the sober thinking people of the Loyal States by its madness. All that host which came into the field, and that great reserve which stood behind it at home, claimed the vindication of their conduct on one or the other of these mo tives, often in the avowal of both. They professed secession, or revolution, or both, quite indifferent to the moral responsi bility inferred by either. I have observed many persons, whose previous education and habit of opinion had committed them against the doctrine of secession, seizing with avidity upon what they were glad to call a right of revolution, too plainly as a mere salvo to bring their easily satisfied consciences into accord with their fore gone resolve to embark in the rebellion. They imagined they had found a complete justification in so wretched a self-deceit as this, even for a deed so portentous as that of rending their country into fragments. They did not deign to ask themselves the question whether their revolution had a single plea to re deem it from the disgrace of an immeasurable crime. It was enough to call it " revolution," and thenceforth treason became transmuted into a virtue. "You are very much mistaken, sir, 1 said a young Marylander conversing with an acquaintance in Washington, just after the famous nineteenth of April, speak ing with exultation of that bloody scene in the streets of Balti more, in which the citizen soldiers, while peaceably marching through in obedience to law and in the performance of honor able duty, were ferociously set upon and murdered, the young spokesman himself scarcely concealing his own participation in the affair, but describing it as a heroic exploit, " You are much 398 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE mistaken when you call this a not. No, sir, it is a revolution ! Maryland does not go for secession, she goes for revolution." All thought of crime had, of course, vanished from his mind. His heart was full of war. He was ready to desolate every field in Maryland and convert her chief city into a blackened ruin. Revolution with what excuse for it ! had been in stalled. The next step was to make it glorious with carnage. With such a flippant and silly casuistry as this, how many thousands have imbued their hands in the blood of their brethren ! I have seen others, not quite bold enough to outface the opinion of the community in which they lived, by an open avowal of a purpose of revolution there being still some pru dent suspicion that the people of the neighborhood were not yet maddened up to the delusion of believing in the tyranny of our free Government who have gradually slid into the doctrine of secession, as the only shift left them to gratify a love for political excitement, and to furnish a pretext for join ing the ranks of comrades who had fired their imagination with visions of honor and hopes of personal reward to be won over the prostrate body of their country. In such case the feeble plea of secession once called the peaceful process of change was held to justify all the wild violence which pre luded and challenged the measures taken by the Government for its own defence. I will not say that there are not large numbers of persons in the South who have given their aid to this destructive war on more honest grounds. It is not credible that, in a conflict of such momentous issues, whole communities should rush into it with such earnest zeal as stirs the heart of the Southern States, and should pursue it with such brave perseverance, through such an experience of suffering and sacrifice as we now witness, without being sustained by some very vivid con viction of right and duty. We know too well, and deplore too poignantly, the fact that in those ranks are found many men adorned with the best qualities that inspire respect and confi- ON THE EEBELLION. 399 dence. Their armies and their councils are full of them. They do us a great injustice if they think we underrate either their sincerity or their personal worth. How joyously would we welcome them back to that brotherhood which they have so recklessly broken ! But all history warns us that the virtue of strife is not to be judged by the fervor of its champions nor by the earnestness of their convictions. A false principle, unhap pily, more potently invokes the intemperate vindication of mankind than a true one. It wages a fiercer war ; although, in the end, it is surest of overthrow. When it is brought into conflict with the sentiment of a society as powerful as its own, the very hazard of its assertion presents a danger which exag gerates it into a passion that so distempers the mind as to make reflection hopeless. Many good men of the South have been swept from their feet by this impulse as by a whirlwind. It is very difficult to find the means of friendly approach, in a rebellion like this, to the class of men I have just de scribed, men who, with honest convictions, have fallen into the error of false opinion, through temperament or local influ ence or some ply of early education. The wrong-headed are proverbially obstinate, even in the debates of tranquil life ; they are proportionately hopeless of persuasion in the great turmoils of public affairs, when passion stimulates the heart and inflames the pride of the mind. In looking to this description of really earnest champions of the South, we shall find them, like the others, divided be tween the two motives to which I have referred. There are not a few of the most authoritative of these champions who, by some strange aberration which almost amounts to an idiosyncrasy, have grown up in the conscien tious belief that our national Union was never, and never meant to be, any thing better than a rope of sand, the feeblest voluntary compact, unguarded by a single defence against the superior power of the States ; that no one owed it allegiance, not even the poor respect of reverence ; that no State owed it obedience any further than suited its own convenience. Such 400 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE a fancy must naturally engender contempt for the Union when ever a contingency should arise to bring it into conflict with State pretension. We may trace this extraordinary doctrine to a political vice which has been nursed in the peculiar constitution of Southern society, and which has given the predominant hue to all char acteristic Southern opinion ; that most pernicious vice of an exorbitant and engrossing State pride, a sentiment, which we may say, is not only dangerous, but fatal to any just estimate or conception of the national supremacy. I do not stop here to consider the source, the extent or the influences of this sentiment. I have only to remark, that it takes hold of much of the Southern mind with the grasp and quality of a great egotism, creating an emotion of self-glorifi cation in those who foster it, and breeding ideas of sectional and personal superiority which make them jealous of the Na tional Government, and, in a certain sense, unfriendly to all who look upon that Government as a paramount power. They habitually degrade the Union in the common esteem of their circle, reduce their politics to the standard of a narrow provin cialism, and disqualify themselves for that comprehensive statesmanship which embraces catholic love of country. We have been accustomed in past time long before this sad commotion had ruffled the surface of our peaceful life to smile at some of the phases of character which this senti ment had impressed upon a class of country gentlemen very frequently encountered in the older States of the South. Many a man of this worshipful order, jocund and complacent in the patriarchal dignity conferred by hereditary bondsmen and acres, has been pleasantly noted, in those innocent clays, for a constitutional dogmatism on the question of the sovereignty of the State, and for the radiant self satisfaction with which he was wont to demonstrate the shallowness of that pestilent fal lacy which, he affirmed, so often misled the logic of Congress and muddled the brains of Webster and Clay, and even, he was sorry to believe, of Marshall and Madison, the fallacy, ON THE REBELLION. 401 namely, of supposing that the United States could lawfully as pire to the grandeur of a nation. Centralization was the phan tom which appeared especially to haunt the minds of these worthy gentlemen. "We are plunging into the gulf of cen tralization," was their common warning. If, in making this dogma clear, they were somewhat incomprehensible or even tedious, they were always earnest and, in their own judgment, infallible. But while this State pride did no greater harm, in our ear lier and happier era, than the producing this crop of imprac ticable dialecticians, whose obstructive philosophy was con stantly overleaped by the general good sense of the nation, and whom the country could afford to endure, and even to flatter, for the good-natured vanity of their opinions, it has, in this later and sadder day, converted its once innocuous votaries into seditious plotters against the common peace, and, by rapid transition, into fierce soldiers and implacable rebels. It has now become apparent that this excessive pride of State has been silently, for half a century or more, sowing the seeds of that dreadful strife of which the present generation is reap ing the harvest. All of this class of thinkers whom I have sought to char acterize by their extravagant devotion to a distorted ideal of the ascendant position of the State in our political system, and by their personal sentiment of State pride and its corrol- laries of State Rights, as these are magnified by the lens of Southern opinion are, by natural consequence and fair de duction from their antecedents, out-and-out Secessionists, hon estly consistent in their faith, and do not pretend to, or desire, other justification for their participation in the present disturb ance, than that which they find in their own philosophy. There is another class, the counterpart to these, equally sincere in their conviction, wholly opposed to this theory of secession, wholly unstricken by this inordinate estimate of the State, who are afflicted with a hallucination even more mis chievous. They are men who have wrought themselves to the 402 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE belief that the National Government has already grown to be a monster of such horrid proportions and propensities as to be no longer endurable by a free people ; that it has been per verted to use their own language into a " consolidated des potism," under the pressure of whose malignant power all liberty, civil and religious, is doomed to be crushed out ; that the representative system no longer affords space for the ex pression of the popular will as a defence against executive am bition ; that State organizations are no longer barriers against national encroachments, and that the President and his party are not only the absolute lords of the ascendant, but that their power is destined to be perpetual and universal. Such are the spectres that have affrighted the imagination of these men and moved them to the melancholy conviction that noth ing short of a bloody revolution can rescue them and their generations from the grasp of this inexorable tyranny. Noth ing, therefore, in their view, is more righteous, manly, and pa triotic than a stern appeal to the sword as a redress for their wrongs. In this excited temper they rush into the melee of. revolution, with the sincere hope of being able to regain their lost liberties in a new Confederacy enlightened and sustained by the tolerant and freedom-loving nature of Southern opinion, and founded on the sacred corner-stone of unlimited Afri can slavery ! Both of these opposite groups of thinkers are now pro foundly in earnest in this conflict, and, what is certainly cal culated to excite the wonder of an unconcerned spectator, are quite in harmony with each other, acting together for a common end, apparently unconscious of their divergence of creed, and the trouble they might expect to find, in the event of success, to administer to their mutual satisfaction the form of government they have unanimously adopted. Now, it is to be remarked that, while the master-spirits of this furious war have seen the value and taken advantage of these alternate agencies which have been so busy in stirring up the people to a revolt against the Government ; and while ON THE REBELLION. 403 they have lost no opportunity to encourage this variety of mo tive, and have plied every artifice of seduction or force to lure, drive, or drag impetuous manhood and credulous age, no less than pliant youth, into fatal alliance with the crime of treason, by every argument adapted to the prejudices, scruples, or different temperaments they had to deal with, they have themselves been cautious, in every public or official proclama tion of their enterprise, to avoid any acknowledgment of a de sign of revolution. Whatever the intrinsic motive of their as sault has been, however violent and revolutionary their pro ceeding, the official attitude they have assumed is that of States asserting their right to a peaceful and constitutional retirement from the National Union. They proclaim a right of secession as the sole basis of their action ; while it is too unhappily evident that both their design and practice are rev olution in its boldest and rudest form of exhibition. Their proclamation is intended for the world, and more especially for that European world whose sympathy they have evoked, whose aid they have expected, and whose moral support it was deemed all important to conciliate. They were too astute not to perceive that while their scheme was simply a design to destroy the Union by a daring and impious act of violence, and upon its ruins to construct a separate empire of their own, adapted to the polity suggested by their personal ambition and the greed of a fancied bound less wealth they would hold a vantage ground in the great quarrel by keeping out of view every consideration which might infer their acknowledgment of a rebel position. We may easily recount the obvious disadvantages which such an avowal would have thrown in their way, and which the secession theory if the world could be persuaded to ac credit it would avoid. First. The acknowledgment of a revolutionary movement would (as I have hitherto had occasion to remark) have car ried the admission that they were the aggressors in the war ; that war was contemplated by them as the necessary and pre- 404 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE meditated means of their success, and was, consequently, an act of their own making, for revolution always implies rebel lion, and rebellion is war. Second. It would have silenced at once that popular outcry against coercion which was found so effective, in the beginning of the quarrel, in exciting a prejudice against the Government, by charging it with the perpetration of a flagrant outrage against States that were merely asserting their constitutional rights. For rebellion being in its nature aggressive, every man would acknowledge that the Government would be but in the performance of its clearest duty in arraying the force of the country to resist the blow aimed at it and to punish the assailant. If there be any obligation more distinctly sanc tioned by the concurrent opinion of mankind or the law of nations, and the neglect of which is stigmatized by a deeper disgrace than any other in the sphere of public duty, it is that which is demanded of every nation to protect the welfare of its people against " privy conspiracy, sedition, and rebellion," those three grievous plagues of organized society against which the Church weekly invokes the deliverance of Heaven. If, therefore, the rebel leaders had announced their design as one of revolution, seeking to overthrow the laws and break up the established order of the Union by violent application of force, there was no man among them so obtuse as not to be capable of seeing how senseless must have been the complaint against the President for invoking the aid of the military pow er of the country to resist them. Third. They knew that a scheme of revolution, being an appeal to those who are discontented with the Government to rebel against it, only addresses itself to such as believe in its expediency, and leaves all who do not assent to that expedi ency, at liberty to refuse their aid ; that this freedom of ac tion would, in the first stages of the movement, have allowed a large portion of the people of the South the opportunity to stand firm to their loyalty, and refuse to take any share in the revolt against their country ; while, on the secession the- ON THE REBELLION. 405 ory, the State would act in its sovereign capacity, and, by de claring the separation complete, would exact the obedience of its citizens. In the first case, the citizen would regard him self as an individual free agent, with full liberty to decide upon his own conduct in the latter, he would be overborne and coerced by a corporate authority claiming his allegiance and subordinating his individual will to what is called the public interest. Fourth. Revolution also infers another and still more em barrassing right, that of counter revolution. If the State may rebel against the National Government, why may not an aggrieved or discontented portion of the people of the State rebel against the State ? Rebellion is a teacher of " bloody instructions" which may " return to plague the inventor." What argument can Virginia, for example, make in favor of a revolt against the authority of the Union, that may not be used with tenfold force by her own western counties to justify a revolt against her ? Virginia herself had really no definable grievance against the Union. She was absolute mistress of her own domestic government, and could freely enact and ex ecute all laws which she might deem necessary to her own welfare within her own limits. No human power could inter fere with her there. She has never yet indicated a single item of grievance resulting from the acts of the Federal Gov ernment. In fact that Government has always been, in great part, in her own hands, or under the control of her influence. If she has not been happy and prosperous it is her own fault. I mean to say, she has no cause whatever to excuse her rebel lion against the Union. Yet she revolted ; we may say, gave to the revolution a countenance and support without which it would have speedily sunk into a futile enterprise. Having come into it, she assumed the right to compel her unwilling citizens to cast their lives and fortunes into the same issue. A large portion of her people, comprising the inhabitants of many counties in the mountain region of the Alleghanies, have always been distinguished as, indeed, seems to be the char- 406 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE acteristic of all our mountain country for their strong attach ment to the Union. These people have an aversion to sla very, and have been steadily intent upon establishing and ex panding a system of free labor. They have, in fact, very little in common, either of sentiment or interest, with the governing power of the State. When, therefore, the question of seces sion was submitted to them, they voted against it. From that moment they were marked, and when the State, under the control of its lowland interest, raised the banner of revolt, its first movement was to invite the Southern army to occupy the mountain districts, to overawe and drive the people there, not only into submission to the dominant power of the State, but into active hostility against the Union. To this end these loyal people were pursued with a bitter persecution, harried by a ruffian soldiery, hunted from their homes into the moun tain fastnesses, their dwellings burnt, their crops destroyed, their fields laid waste, and every other cruelty inflicted upon them to which the savage spirit of revolution usually resorts to compel the consent of those who resist its command. The inhabitants of these beautiful mountain valleys are a simple, brave, and sturdy people, and all these terrors were found insuffi cient to force them into an act of treason. They refused, and in their turn revolted against this execrable tyranny and drew their swords in favor of the Union. What more natural or righteous than such a resistance ? And yet, Virginia affects to consider this the deepest of crimes, and is continually threatening vengeance against what she calls these rebels : Virginia, the rebel, denouncing rebellion ! Her only plea is, that she has only seceded; but Western Virginia rebels. There is a great difference ! The Southern Confederacy, like Virginia, sees this great difference in the two categories, and is quick enough to take advantage, as occasion serves, of that which suits its purpose. The same state of things exists in Eastern Tennessee, in Western North Carolina, in Arkansas, and even in parts of Georgia and Alabama. Counter revolution would be rife in ON THE REBELLION. 407 many districts, if the rebel Government did not suppress it with an iron hand, and subjugate the people by the presence of military force. Even this would be impossible if they had not insinuated into the popular mind of the South, as largely as they have done, the conviction of a right of secession, and persuaded the country that they were acting on that theory, and were but asserting the legitimate sovereignty of the States. Western Virginia, for two years, endured the privation and suffering of this cruel and wicked attempt to enforce its sub mission and compel its people to abjure their earnest and eager allegiance to the Union two years that left them without law, without any of the apparatus of government, helpless in every thing but their own firm resolution and voluntary self-control as an orderly community ; until, finding themselves under a neces sity for organization, they erected their broken community into a government claiming its foundation in a just and righteous revolution, and in that character sought a place in the Union. Congress assented to their claim, and holding them, moreover, as loyal men, constituting a majority in number of the whole people of Virginia who retained a lawful citizenship in that State, accorded to them the right to express the voice of the State in favor of the division which thus gave a new member to the Union. What lawful objection can the South make to this counter revolution, but the simple, and, in the actual state of the case, absurd idea that it is not itself pursuing a career of revolution, but only a constitutional right of secession ? Lastly, I may add to the considerations which have oper ated upon the mind of the Southern leaders in their endeavor to persuade the world that they are not amenable to the re sponsibilities of a rebellion, one which I have presented in a former letter, and which I briefly repeat here as necessary to the completeness of this summary. The inauguration of a re bellion imposes upon those who attempt it the necessity of showing a just cause for such an assault upon the peace of so ciety. It must be no casual disturbance of the welfare of a 408 LETTERS OF MB. AMBEO8E district, no fancied possible wrong impending over the future, no motive of factious ambition, but a real, present, perma nent element of actual or prospective discontent which is be yond the reach of peaceful redress through the appointed forms of amendment, but which is so radicated in the constitution of government that nothing short of forcible resistance can remove it. The writers in the interest of legitimacy, as that is understood in European law, say it must be a condition of intolerable and irremediable oppression. Our American doc trine does not go so far as that. We substitute for it a rea sonable apprehension of an incurable perversion of govern ment towards the invasion of public or private rights. And, even in that case, revolution cannot justly be resorted to until, by appeal to all the normal or appointed means of redress, it is proved that remedy is hopeless. Short of these conditions, revolution is the greatest of crimes, the blacker in proportion to the unreality of the asserted grief or the neglect of the re sort to the ordained process of amendment. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any justifiable motive to revolution in a popular representative government, where the whole sovereign power resides in the people themselves, and their constitution and laws are subject to any amelioration suggested by the pop ular will. Certainly the founders of our government sup posed that, in the scheme they matured, they had forever ex tinguished the right of revolution. But those I have enumerated are, at least, the conditions to which the leaders of the present rebellion would be bound to submit their action, if they confess a design to overthrow the Union by force ; and, confessing that design, they would oc cupy simply the position of rebels fully aware of the hazards and the penalty of their undertaking, and presumably ready to meet them. In that view they become liable to be treated as traitors, they, their aiders and abettors. They lose all claim to the protection of the laws, and, still more emphatically, to the right to exercise any privilege of national citizenship. They can hold r.o offi: , S ~te or Federal, which implies alle- ON THE REBELLION. 409 glance to the Government ; they abjure or renounce all right to give a vote in either State or national affairs where the qual ification demands national citizenship ; they are enemies, while in arms, to be met in mortal conflict ; when subdued, they are culprits, dependent upon the clemency or the justice of the Government. It was to avoid these conclusions, as I have said, that the authors of this movement have been careful to veil their pro ceeding under the official proclamation of the right of seces sion. They have found it a difficult task to reconcile the impetu ous rashness of their career with this theory. Secession, if honestly conceived to be a right, and honestly pursued, would have sought, at least, a preliminary parley in a convention. It would have moved slowly along through all the customary forms of debate. It would have published a manifesto of its motives for the separation, and calmly laid down the law which defined its privilege, and have shown the unanimity of the Southern people in the belief of it. None of these things has it done. The conductors of the proceeding began in a par oxysm of impetuous enthusiam ; asserted their purpose in a general muster of their forces ; put every State in arms, and furnished their magazines of war ; boasted of their prowess, with threats of seizure of the Capital, and even of invasion and conquest of the North ; glorified themselves with the imagina tion of an unlimited control over the sympathy and interest of foreign Powers, which they confidently contemplated as prompt and irresistible allies. Their language was not only that of arrogant dictation, but of eager and bloody defiance. They rushed forward with a precipitation which seemed, and no doubt was intended, to preclude all reflection or inquiry into the merits of the cause. There was the ominous glimmer of predetermined war in every step that was taken. Their first act was to close the courts against the recovery of debts, which was sufficiently explained, in the sequel, by the confiscation of all moneys due to Northern creditors. The Charleston Mercu- 18 410 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE ry, exulting in the approach of the day for assembling the State Convention, maliciously spoke of secession as " quasi war," which would justify, what, even then, it recommended, the sequestration of all property in the South belong to North ern citizens. They seized the national forts and arsenals wherever they could lay their hands on them ; insulted the na tion and disgraced themselves by a contemptible act of con trived treachery in compassing the surrender of the army in Texas by the complicity of its own officers. They wanted money, and they seized the mint at New Orleans ; arms, and they seized the manufactory at Harper s Ferry ; ships, cannon, and naval stores, and they forcibly took possession of the na vy-yard at Gosport, and pounced upon re venue- cutters, private steamers, and merchant-vessels at their moorings ; they even exhorted and encouraged officers of the navy, to whom the na tion had confided the guardianship of its honor and its flag, to betray that sacred trust, by an act too base to find expression in the vocabulary of execration. All these things were done, for the most part, in the States where they were perpetrated, before they had even laid the flimsy foundation of an ordinance of secession, and done, too, by the orders and assistance of men who have wearied the public ear with the ceaseless vaunt of their chivalry ! Senators and Cabinet Ministers, as well as officers of the army and navy, did not scruple to retain their posts for no other reason than the advantage it gave them it striking a more sure and deadly blow at the heart of the Government which had elevated them to these honors. History, in its most revolting chapters does not furnish a page of deeper infamy than that engendered by the madness of this wicked zeal to destroy. Perfidy would seem to have risen to the rank of a cardinal virtue : " Tanta vis morbi, uti tabes, tivium animos invaserat !" These acts, let me repeat, were chiefly the forerunners of the deed of secession, perpetrated in a time of peace, and while the National Government was yet in the hands of the ON THE REBELLION. 411 perpetrators, a helpless, compliant, and almost willing accessary to their design ; when the small national army and navy were scattered far and wide ; when that untrained military power which sleeps in the bosom of the Republic, and which no peril had yet awakened, could not possibly have been arrayed to meet the emergency ; when the public mind was palsied by the sudden stupor which this incredible outrage had cast upon it In these circumstances was the peaceful process of secession set on foot, and the deceived masses of the Southern States stimulated into that unnatural frenzy which widely hurried them into a treason from which retreat soon became impossible. When this drama of Secession came to the stage of its formal enactment in the passage of the secession ordinances, it was characterized by frauds only more stupendous than those I have described, because they implicated a greater number of actors and spread over a wider surface. While some of the States, perhaps a majority of them, were in earnest in their resolve to secede, the most important States were not ; and if the people in these had been left to the free expression of their wish they would have refused. The Convention of Virginia had been elected by a vote which was largely against secession, and the Legislature which authorized that Convention had taken care to provide that no ordinance of secession should have any effect unless ratified by a subsequent expression of the popular will in the regular election. When the Convention assembled at Richmond there was a majority of its members opposed to the ordinance. The scenes that were enacted in the sequence of the proceed ing by which that majority was reduced to a minority, are only partially known to the country. While the sessions were open to the public observation the majority held its ground, but amid what perils and appliances every inhabitant of Richmond at that time knows. The best men of the State, and there were many, who had dared to speak in the Conven tion in favor of the Union, were exposed to the grossest in- 412 LBTTEKS OF MK. AMBROSE suits from the mob that filled the lobbies, and by whom they were pursued with hootings and threats to their own dwellings. Still, no vote could be got sufficient to carry the ordinance. The convention then resolved to exclude the public and man age their work in secret session. From that day affairs took a new turn. The community of Richmond was filled with strife. The friends of the Union, both in the convention and out of it, a large number of persons, were plunged into the deepest anxiety and alarm. They felt that the cause was lost, and that the sentiment of the majority of the State would be overruled. Quarrels arose. Ardent and reckless men were distempered with passion. It was no longer safe to dis cuss the subject of the day in the streets. The hotels were filled with strangers, loud, peremptory, and fierce. A friend of the Union could not mingle in these crowds without cer tainty of insult, nor even sometimes without danger of per sonal violence. The recusant members of the Convention were plied with every expedient to enforce their submission. The weak were derided, the timid bullied^ the wavering cajoled with false promises and false representations of the state of opinion in the country. Those who could not be reached by these arguments, but who were found pliable to more genial impulses, were assailed by flattery, by the influences of friendship, by the blandishments of the dinner-table, and finally carried away by the wild enthusiasm of midnight revelry. If the Con vention had sat in Stanton or Fredericksburg anywhere but in Richmond no ordinance of secession would probably have been passed. As it was, it was a work of long and sinister industry to bring it about. It became necessary to fire the people with new and startling sensations, to craze the pub lic mind with excitement. To this end messages were sent to Charleston to urge the bombardment of Sumter. The fort was accordingly assailed and forced to surrender, notwith standing an assurance from the commander that he could not hold out three days for want of provisions The President s proclamation calling out the militia which was the necessary ON THE REBELLION. 413 and expected consequence of this outrage supplied all the rage that was wanted. The whole South became ablaze. Men lost all self-control, and were ready to obey any order. The vote of the Convention had been canvassed from time to time, during this process of ripening the resolution of mem bers for the act of secession, and it was now found that it might be successfully put. It was taken three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, and the public were told it was carried by a large majority. Subsequent disclosures show that upwards of fifty of its members stood firm and preserved their equanimity in this great tempest of passion. The scene at the taking of the vote is described by one of its members as the riot of a hospital of lunatics. The ratification of this act was yet to be gone through, as prescribed by the law, in a vote of the people to be taken in May. That proceeding was substantially ignored in all that followed. An appointment of members to the rebel Congress was immediately made, to represent the State in the Provision al Government then established at Montgomery. The Presi dent of the new Confederacy was forthwith invited to send an army into the State ; and, accordingly, when the month of May arrived, troops were posted in all those counties where it was supposed any considerable amount of loyalty to the Union existed among the people. The day of election appointed for the ratification found this force stationed at the polls, and the refractory people mastered and quelled into silence. Union men were threatened in their lives if they should dare to vote against the ordinance ; and an influential leader in the move ment, but recently a Senator of the United States, wrote and published a letter hinting to those who might be rash enough to vote against secession, that they must expect to be driven out of the State. Of course, the ratification found no opposi tion in any doubtful county. I do not say that, in a free vote, it might not have been carried. Harper s Ferry and the Gos- port Navy Yard had both, in pursuance of that policy of prof itable sensation-making, been seized in the interval after the 414 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE passage of the ordinance, and the passions of the people had been still more fiercely wrought up to a fury that had banish ed all hope of reflection ; but my object is to show that the whole secession movement was planned and conducted in the spirit of headlong revolution and premeditated war. In Tennessee the proceeding was even less orderly than in Virginia. In Missouri it was no better. The attempt was made to carry Kentucky and Maryland by the same arts and the same frauds, but utterly failed. Maryland has repudiated secession and its abettors with a persistent and invincible loy alty. Kentucky, under severe trials and in the actual con test of civil war, has bravely and honorably preserved her faith and repelled every assault. Secession has never won an inch of her soil that it did not temporarily win by the sword, and was not again forced to abandon. In not less than seven or eight elections has she declared her unalterable fealty to the Union by overwhelming majorities. There has never been the smallest ground for a pretence of her acceptance of a place in the Southern Confederacy, where, nevertheless, she is feign ed to be represented by members in both houses of the rebel Congress, not one of whom would dare to show himself open ly in the district he affects to represent. We are at a loss to im agine any pretext to claim this stanch and loyal State as o-ne in that treasonable fellowship, unless it be that, being the birth place of their President, it was necessary to claim it for the Confederacy, in order to avoid the awkward predicament of having rewarded, with the highest honor, the man who could, in violation of the most sacred principles of Southern chivalry certainly that most ostentatiously clamored in the ear of the world, as distinctive of the Southern cause consent to draw his sword against his own State. It is not necessary to pursue further the history of these events as they were developed in the first stage of this fero cious assault upon the Union. Those I have brought into view are quite sufficient to afford us an unmistakable index to the purpose and temper of the Southern leaders. They denote ON THE REBELLION. 4:15 rebellion, and nothing but rebellion, against the lawful Govern ment of the United States, rebellion conceived in the bitter est hostility and perpetrated with immediate recourse to arms. They prove the dissimulation of that official challenge to the world to recognize, in this terrible attack upon the public or der, an honest assertion of a constitutional right. They cast an air of shocking mockery over that peevish plaint which came up everywhere, at that day, from the depths of the Se cession, " All we ask is, Let us alone /" The movement was revolution, an attempt to break to pieces an existing dynasty by force ; and history will so de scribe it. Let it be measured by the law of Revolution. If the National Government has grievously failed in its duty to any State, afflicting it with an irremediable wrong, let it be so judged and the revolution vindicated. If, on the other hand, the Government of the Union has done them no wrong ; if these complaints have grown out of the mere illusion of a heated fancy ; still more, if this wild and reckless outrage upon the peace of society has been prompted by the insolence of ambition ; and the credulous hosts of the South have been persuaded by fraudulent misrepresentation to lift their hands against the paternal and beneficent Government that has pro tected them and given them the inappreciable blessings of a grand and powerful republic ; and, above all, if the contrivers of this flagitious plot have been pandering to the rival enmity of the great Powers of the earth, to win their aid in this parri cidal enterprise, and have sought, by the unutterable baseness of complicity with them, to shear the American people of that strength which has made them and their institutions the refuge of oppressed Freedom throughout the world then, we say, let them be held to the strict responsibility of that immense crime. And, again, if there really be any considerable portion of the people of the United States sufficiently considerable to originate authentic opinion who believe in the doctrine of secession and are capable of the enormity of this revolt to 416 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE bring it into exercise, then, also for that reason, let the war go on until every fibre of that pestilent heresy is cut out and for ever destroyed in the fire of popular censure, that no germ of it may remain to engender a new growth of disaster and ruin in this beautiful garden of American liberty. LETTER VIII. CONSPIRACY. MARCH, 1864. I open now a curious chapter in the rebellion, which brings into view facts that have not been noticed as attentively as they deserve. No complete history of this great disturbance can be written without giving them a conspicuous place in the nar rative. The scheme of separating the States was an old design, al most as old, in the meditation of a class of Southern politi cians, as the Union itself. I have had occasion, in a previous letter, to show, in a very cursory way, that some leading politi cians of the South speculated on such a project upon the elec tion of the first Northern President, the elder Adams. Dis union then was "a speck no larger that a man s hand/ The turn of fortune, which gave to the nation a succession of Vir ginia Presidents for twenty-five years afterwards, temporarily satisfied these malcontents, and allowed them, at least, to tol erate the Union during that happy period of unbroken South ern dominion. But it only threw the policy of separation into abeyance ; for as soon as the continuance of that succession was interrupted, by the election of the second Adams, the old grief returned, and disunion once more became a muttered thought. "The speck" began to expand into a lurid cloud, and grew darker and darker until it broke upon the land in this tempest of blood and fire. That it did not sooner come to a crisis is due alone to the supple complacency of the Demo- ON THE REBELLION. 417 cratic party. They flattered the lordly ambition of the aristo cratic South, courted its favor, obeyed its behests, and found a satisfactory compensation in being permitted to share in the spoils of the victory which their alliance enabled their patrons to win. It has always been a sad and sore fact for an honest lover of his country to contemplate the successful cajolery with which the South played off that great party of the North, to make it subservient to the selfish and sectional purpose of putting the whole Union at the foot of its slaveholding master. The good and honest men of that party see this now, and ac knowledge it with a blush for the dupery to which, in the full career of their success, they unconsciously we must hope suc cumbed. They were never entirely awakened to this delusion until the cannon of Sumter startled them from the tranquil en joyment of a friendship which they had found, through long years, too prolific in its rewards to allow a question of its sin cerity. But the truth is, and these good gentlemen have so found it, the South never had the slightest esteem for its North ern comrades, the least respect for their worth, or the small est sympathy with their opinions. Nothing is stranger than that long association of the aristocratic with the democratic ele ment of the country " the cavalier and the mud-sill," to adopt the elegant phrase of Southern speech pigging it together in the same truckle-bed. I do not wish to disparage the intelli gence or the patriotism of the many excellent men who were brought into that equivocal companionship, in which, doubt less, they had persuaded themselves that they could turn it to account for the good of the country ; but it must always be hereafter since the events of 1860 -have opened their eyes a matter of surprise to themselves that they could have endured so long in such a relation, made such sacrifices of personal independence to sustain it, and worked so diligently to build up the power and exalt the pride of the South at the expense of the nation ; and, in the end, to find how little respect they had won from their allies, and how little permanent advantage for themselves. Nothing less than an extravagant obliquity of 1 8* 418 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE sight or lamentable blindness could have misled a party, so ostentatious in its boast of a distinctive love of the people, to seek or suffer an alliance or fraternity with a school of politi cians who never disguised their contempt for the people, who never spoke of the North but in terms of obloquy, and who never, on the national theatre, professed any other policy than that of absolute Southern domination. It is very apparent now that there never was any real democratic sentiment in the old Southern States, and it is a great marvel that the Democratic party should have been so long in finding that out. Southern feeling on this point is very outspoken, ever since the rebellion has forced it to throw off the disguise under which it so long but so scantly concealed its aversion to its old aux iliaries. I have at hand a few memorabilia which show how contemptuously Southern men regarded, and even how bitterly they detested the allies they once found so convenient to their needs, and whom they only flattered as long as they could make them their tools. When the time arrived at which they could remove the mask and utter their scorn, it was in no stinted tone that they expressed openly the sentiment which had before been breathed only in the confidence of private life. The Richmond Whig of the 28th of May, 1861, very early in the rebellion, gives us a sample of this long pent-up but then explosive estimate of the North. " We" says this organ of the ruling sentiment of the seat of the Confederate Government " must bring these enfran chised slaves back to their true condition. They have long very properly looked upon themselves as our social inferiors as our serfs ; their mean, niggardly lives, their low, vulgar, and sordid occupations have ground this conviction into them. But, of a sudden, they have come to imagine that their numer ical strength gives them power, and they have burst the bonds of servitude and are running riot with more than the brutal passions of a liberated wild beast. Their uprising has all the characteristics of a ferocious servile insurrection. . . . We, of the South, sought only to separate our destiny from theirs, ON THE REBELLION. 4:19 content to leave them to pursue their own degraded tastes and vicious appetites, as they might choose. But they will not leave us this privilege. They force us to subdue them or be subdued. They give us no alternative. They have suggested to us the invasion of their territory and the robbery of their banks and jewelry-stores. We may profit by the suggestion as far as invasion goes for that will enable us to restore them to their normal condition of vassalage, and teach them that cap in hand is the proper attitude of the servant before his master. 1 This in May, 1861 ; when no blow had been struck but that inflicted by their own cannon upon Sumter, no purpose indicated by the North but that of protecting the Government against violence, and the restoration of the country to every right which had been given to it by the Constitution. This is but a specimen of the peevish and insane malice against the Free States with which an influential class in the South entered into this war. I could multiply examples of the same madness, exhibited in the same circles, from the begin ning of the rebellion to the present day ; but I shall confine myself to another extract of later date, to which I refer only because it has a special significance to my subject from its hav ing been provoked by a recent offer of friendship from a rem nant of the Northern Democracy which, unmoved by the bit ter contumely all along heaped upon them, were still willing to bow to the rod lifted for their chastisement, and, with a shame ful abnegation of their manhood, to proffer a new submission to their imperious masters. With what utter loathing is that advance repelled, in the following notice of it by the Govern ment organ of the rebel Confederacy in Richmond, The En quirer of March, 1863. It leaves no room to doubt what por tion of the North was the particular object of Southern con tempt in that sally of vituperation I have quoted above. " To be plain," says this paper, in commenting upon the suggestions of these complaisant friends, " we fear and distrust far more these apparently friendly advances of the Democrats than the open atrocity of the philanthropists of Massachusetts. 420 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE That Democratic party always was our worst enemy, and, but for its poisonous embrace, these States would have been free and clear of the umiatural Union twenty years ago It is not the Sewards and Sumners, the Black Republicans and Abolitionists who have hurt us. They were right all along ; there was f an ir repressible conflict between two different civilizations. . . . If we did not discover, as soon as the Abolitionists, this great truth, it was because the Democratic party, neutral as it was in principle, false to both sides, and wholly indifferent to the morale of either of the opposing communities, placed itself between, raised the banner of spoils and we all know the rest. The idea of that odious party coming to life again makes us shiver. Its foul breath is malaria ; its touch is death." Let us remark that this diatribe is directed to that branch of the Democratic party which rejoices in the name of Breckin- ridge. The Breckinridge Democracy, as it is called, ever since they placed him at their head as their leader, are everywhere, with few exceptions, the secessionists of the South and their sympathizers in the North. All other Democracy has proved itself true and loyal. I could not count a half score of those who refused to go with Breckinridge who are not ardent sup porters of the Union. There may be such, but I do not meet them. In the main, the country has found no purer patriots, no more earnest and steady friends, no braver or more willing soldiers in this war than the Democracy who recoiled from marching under that Breckinridge banner ; while under that banner are gathered all the doubtful and all the zealous de fenders, pursuers, and apologists of the" rebellion. The schism has brought out the sheep from the goats. They are no longer one, and the Democratic party is redeemed, in the good opin ion of the country, by this winnowing which has cast all its true patriots into their proper position, and left the false in an array which all men can see and none mistake. Now, looking to this notorious fact, and measuring its import by the estimate which the South makes of all democracy, and especially re flecting upon the universal acceptance of aristocratic rule in ON THE REBELLION. 421 the South, what are we to think of the sincerity of that old-time profession of democracy by Breckinridge himself, by Jefferson Davis, by Toombs, and the whole roll of Southern professors of that repudiated and despised creed ? Still more, what are we to think of the manhood, the honesty, and the intelligence of that fragment of the same party in the North, and their ob sequious truckling to the haughty guides of Southern rebellion who " shiver" at the proffered contact ? What is to be seen in this but the basest spirit of self-seeking and longing for the opportunity to make a bargain, in which the only consideration that can be offered is the betrayal of the country ? With this brief glance at the position held by the Demo cratic party and the power it possessed, in combination with the South, to control the course of political events, T am now prepared to take up the principal topic of this letter, the con spiracy by which the disruption of the Union was supposed to be secured. As long as the Southern chiefs were perfectly sure that they could hold the Government by the aid of the Democratic party of the Free States, they were content that things should move along in a peaceful current. But the demonstration made by each returning census, for the last thirty years, of the rapid in crease of the vote of the Free States, was, in their apprehen sion, a portent of evil. They saw in it the swift advance of the day which was to strip them of that monopoly in the admin istration of the public affairs to which their ambition had been educated, almost into the conception of it as a birthright. Mr. Calhoun had warned them of the coming of that day, and, in great part, devoted his life to the invention of devices to avoid it. To this end, he taught the dogma of the right of the minor ity to control the majority, even on the broadest questions of national policy, through the intervention of State sovereignty ; asserted the right of nullification ; preached the doctrine of a perpetual equilibrium in the Government between Free and Slave States altogether irrespective of the growth of free com munities and of the inevitable tendency which our whole his- 422 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE tory had exemplified towards the increase of these through the operation of that economic law which has always been driving slavery from North to South. No matter what dispar ity between the population of Free and Slave States these changes might produce, it was his theory that the equilibrium of political power should be preserved To secure this, he proposed, among other plans, a dual Presidency, somewhat re sembling the arrangement of the Consulship, or more after the manner of that of the Tribunes, in the organism of the Roman Republic, one of his Presidents to wield the Slave power, the other the Free, and each to be armed with a veto upon the legislation of Congress. The idea which lay at the bottom of these teachings is that which has manifested itself in such virulent and destructive activity at this day, as a principle wholly incompatible with re publican government that human bondage, namely, may rightfully be insisted upon, not as a temporary and accidental encumbrance, which a wise policy may endure and provide for in its transient state, but as a necessary and wholesome incident of social organization, to be maintained, promoted, and perpetuated by Christian statesmanship as an essential in gredient of the body politic, and even as the later develop ment of the doctrine explains it as " the corner-stone" of free government. But beyond and above this emanation of a bar baric philosophy, and more captivating to the Southern mind, the sentiment inculcated by this great leader was a jealous vigilance to provide for and secure, under all contingencies, the political ascendency of the South ; and that ascendency, through his influence, thus became not only the universal as piration of the people of the Planting States, but . a postulate which they were determined to elevate into a constitutional right. For the maintenance of this right the governing class often very justly called the Oligarchy of these States have always been ready to dissolve the Union whenever it should become apparent that, in. the Union, they must lose their power. ON THE REBELLION. The obvious danger, in their view, was, that when the pop ulation of the Free should reach to a preponderating majori ty over that of the Slave States, the Democratic party would be compelled to succumb to the popular will of the North, and would not hesitate, in that emergency, to abandon their South ern support for richer and more abundant pastures within their own geographical limits ; that this party would bid a cheerful adieu to their old employers, as soon as they could find better service, happy to get rid of patrons whose gratitude for sacri fices made and favors bestowed was confined to the simple payment of the wages of the bargain, and never rose to the height of a sentiment of respect. Astute Southern politicians always prophesied this event, and looked without regret to the day when they would be obliged to face its approach and de vise measures to guard themselves against its consequences. The Presidential election of 1856 was full of signs of this long-meditated crisis. It, however, passed over without harm : the allies were yet true, and the election of Mr. Buchanan was a Southern victory. But it soon became apparent that the South could never gain another, at least without conces sions, which, in the Southern philosophy, would be more disa- greeble than a defeat. The leading men of the South, in fact, regarded that as the last election that would ever occur under the Constitution and the Union ; and, from that day, an act ive conspiracy was contrived and set in motion to accomplish the object which many had long wished and many more had long feared. I called it a conspiracy because it was the secret plot of influential and managing men to compass a design which was quite impossible of achievement by open and honest appeal to the people. The good sense and natural affection of the Southern masses would have recoiled from a plot for disunion at iny time, up to the day of the first act of secession, if they had been openly invoked to such an enterprise. It required both time and skill " to fire the Southern heart and instruct the Southern mind" for this venture. And I think I may add 424 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE that, even now, after three years of terrible conflict, a large amount of Southern heart remains yet unfired to that dread crime, still more of Southern mind if it dared speak its se cret yet wholly uninstructed in the necessity or the right of this desolating revolution. In the interval between 1856 and 1860, the great problem which engaged the mind of the plotters was, how to frustrate the Democratic party of the North, which had already found a formidable candidate in Mr. Douglas. The difficulty pre sented by that problem was surmounted in the manner which it is now my purpose to describe. The chief element of the plot was the necessity of sunder ing that party by such a blow as should forever separate its Union- supporting section from those who could be persuaded to destroy the Union a separation which, it was supposed, would finally gravitate into a specific division of the Northern and Southern members The great and desired effect of .this schism would be to nullify the power of the party in the com ing election, insure its defeat, and render the election of the Northern candidate a certain result. This was the theory of the movement. It was particularly important that Mr. Doug las should be defeated, but also important that he should be nominated and kept in the field by his friends. The party was quite strong enough to elect its candidate if it should be allowed to unite its vote upon one name. The tactics of the occasion required two candidates. To produce, therefore, an effective and irreconcilable division, it was necessary to intro duce some new and repulsive item into the programme of the Democratic policy ; something that would be sure to produce an explosion. The slave question, as usual, furnished the theme for dis turbance. The party was already dividing on the doctrine touching the extension of slavery into the Territories and the alleged duty of the Government to protect it there. There was much quarrel on this point, and the North was giving some evidence of making a stand against the Southern de- ON THE REBELLION. 425 mand. Mr. Douglas and his friends were very staunch in re sistance, and their cause was growing obstinate in the Free States, while it had no little amount of support in the others. The leaders of the plot were not altogether sure, that they might not lose the hoped-for division of the party, on this point of protection of slavery in the Territories, by some compromise of opinion, of which they had frequent example in previous canvasses : the North might yield something, or a considera ble force from the South might fall in, and so make a strong party again. It became, therefore, necessary to supply a fresh ground of dissension. This was found in a demand for the renewal of the African Slave-trade. If the party could be put under the opprobrium of the slightest suspicion of that de sign, it was manifest that no Free-State Democrat could incur it and live. The party of the North could go very far, as they had heretofore gone, in defending and protecting slavery, but the revival of the slave-trade could not possibly sit upon any Northern stomach. This, then, was the card to be played. Accordingly, in the years 1858 and 1859, ground was broken in this new campaign. The right and purpose to re vive the African Slave-trade was broached to the people of the South, with an intrepidity never equalled in the exploits of the boldest demagogues of any country. The press put out its feelers on this point, and orators of note descanted upon it with a startling audacity. In the lead of these was Mr. Yan- cey, who both wrote and spoke with great effect upon the sub ject ; and the question thus thrown open to public advocacy, found many champions and more friends. In the summer of 1859 consultations were held at the White Sulphur Springs of Virginia, where several prominent leaders had gathered to gether to devise plans for giving full significance and currency to the movement. Soon afterwards, the subalterns who were accustomed to light their lanterns from the fire of the greater lights, were put in motion to circulate and extend the new doc trine, and these took their instructions, not only without re luctance, but with that ready consent which, to an observant 426 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE spectator, was evidence of a preconcerted scheme that only awaited the order of promulgation to become the experimental strategy of a party. It was remarkable that this assault upon the honor of the South brought none of those indignant protests which we have heard in old time against the enormity of the slave-trade, the very mention of which was formerly wont to produce a shudder of disgust. Some few old-fashioned people and old- fashioned presses might have uttered a feeble remonstrance, but these were lost or silenced in the indecent license with which the public mind was abused by the shameless defence of the proposition, both in the written and oral discussions of the period. This unchallenged boldness and this singular silence of reproof were most expressive and fearful omens, to any one who could fully interpret their import, of the calamity that was then brooding over the land. It was very strange to see how little these omens were heeded by the Government, still more, how feebly they awakened the attention of the Northern Democracy. Not even at Charleston, where that Democracy was subsequently assembled in Convention, did its representatives give any sign that they truly understood or appreciated the dangers which lay, as in a mine, beneath their feet While the Southern public was thus becoming familiarized to this disgraceful scheme by popular harangues, other agencies were at work to further the cause by practical experiment. Southern citizens of note embarked in the trade ships were fitted out and dispatched to the African coast ; and for the first time in fifty years, the Atlantic shore of the Southern States was polluted by the landing of cargoes of slaves direct from Africa. The trade could scarcely be called clandestine,, with so little concealment was it practised. The whole popu lation seemed to be implicated in saving the transgressors from molestation and in aiding the distribution of the cargoes. The victims of this piracy were openly introduced on the plantations, and a general complicity rendered futile the at- ON THE REBELLION. 427 tempts of the Government very weak and faltering it is true to recover them. We can hardly credit this singular change in the morale of Southern Society when we read the accounts of the day which give us the details of this trade. South Carolina seemed to have gone mad on the subject. Among other incidents I find this, as published in the Cheraw Gazette: A Colonel Hunt had advertised, by way of encouraging this laudable spirit of enterprise, a reward, to be given by him, of a silver pitcher for the best specimen of a native African negro, to be produced at an appointed time and place for inspection ; and the Gazette, with something like gleeful satisfaction, informs its readers that two boys were exhibited, to the owner of whom the prize was adjudged. They are described with the tact of a connoisseur, as remarkably healthy and intelligent, so in telligent that one of them had already learned to say " wo" when he wanted to stop a horse. This whole affair was un doubtedly nothing less than a bravado to express derision and defiance to the Government and to the general sentiment of the Free States, which the recent importations of slaves had offended ; and was, in its way, a step towards that hideous rebellion which is now visiting retribution upon the very actors in that scene. Every one remembers the farce of the prosecution, in the South, of some of the parties engaged in this iniquitous at tempt to revive the trade. According to a statement I have seen, from a paper published either in Charleston or Savannah, I forget which, some of the persons arrested and waiting in prison for trial were temporarily released on parole, to enable them to attend a political convention some hundred miles off. When one of these cases came before the court for trial, Judge Magrath according to the published reports of the day, gave a very encouraging lift to the friends of the trade, by an exposition of the law which, if not ingenious, was at least new, and was certainly a very courageous onset against that 428 LETTERS OF MB. AMBROSE once-universal sentiment of the country, which was wont to boast that an American Congress was the first power in the world that had vindicated the honor of humanity by branding the slave-trade as piracy. The import of this judicial exposi tion, as stated in the Southern papers, was that slaves pur chased abroad by a citizen of the United States were property, and were entitled to the same protection " on the high seas" as any other American property. If they were purchased, bona fide, in Africa, not stolen or kidnapped, the Govern ment had no right to molest the owner, but, on the contrary, was bound to protect him ; and that the Act of Congress which declared the trade piracy could not be construed to apply to such an importation ; in that application it would be unconstitutional and void. Upon this decision, I believe, the party accused was ac quitted. I regret that I have not recourse to a report of the report of the trial to allow me to speak more precisely of its incidents. But the prominent and most noteworthy feature of the opinion of the court, as given in the current news of the time, was the assertion of a right to the protection of this property " on the high seas." Not long after this trial, the Charleston Convention assem bled, with a full representation of both extremes of the Demo cratic party. Its ostensible purpose was to nominate a candi date for the Presidency. The use intended to be made of it by the Southern managers of the plot some of the chief of which were not of the body, but outside members, holding the wires in their hands, watchers and advisers was to consum mate that feat of which I have spoken, the dismemberment of the party. Of all the tricks of political legerdemain we have ever seen, this was the most dexterous, this exploit of cutting a body in two and setting the severed halves into a battle in which both were sure to be demolished. The neatness of the tour de passe was not so much in the division for that had been often per formed before as in the skill with which the fragments were ON THE REBELLION. 429 set in mortal array against each other. I will endeavor to point out some salient strokes by which this was accomplished, as I trace them through the published proceedings of the Con vention. When this body assembled in April there was, as I have remarked, a clear majority for Mr. Douglas. He and his friends rested mainly upon the position of the Cincinnati platform of 1856. They had been stationary while the tide of Southern sentiment had been sweeping on in the current I have de scribed. The Cincinnati platform maintained Squatter Sover eignty, as it was called, which was a protest against any in tervention of the National Government on the question of sla very: the Government was neither to mar nor make. It is worthy of remark that, in 1856, certain hot-heads of the South, those present in the Convention, insisted upon this non-inter vention with all that angry zeal which is characteristic of the fire-eater, threatening to retire from the Convention and to raise the old spectre of secession if it should be refused. Four years had swept away that humor, and the demand of the same men was now reversed. It was now for extreme intervention, challenged upon pain of immediate rupture, and, as usual, of peremptory resort to the demolition of the Union. In justice to the general character and composition of the Charleston Convention, it is proper to say, there is no room to doubt that nine out of ten of its members went into it with no other expectation than that of accomplishing a Presidential nomination, and of standing by it, in good faith, throughout the election ; that they knew as little as the outside world of the scheme that was hatching. From all the evidence furnish ed by the history of their proceedings, from what we know of the men, and from what we have seen of the eminent devotion " of many of the most conspicuous members to the cause of the country in its recent trials, v/e must believe that, if any of the large majority of that body had penetrated the real design of which it was attempted to make them the dupes, they would have denounced it with an emphasis that would probably 430 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE have saved the nation from these three years of bloody feud and all the misery that is yet to follow. This remark is confined to no sectional division of the Convention. There is proof enough to show that, in the Southern delegations, as well as in the Northern, there were numbers of considerate men whose con duct was guided by patriotic views and true devotion to the Union. Unfortunately, the issues of the time were not in their hands. The plot which frustrated their hopes was secret, known to few, and even now imperfectly understood. I do not mean to say that there were not many members in that Convention who were not fully alive to the mischief which was likely to ensue from the division growing out of the opposition to the principles upon which the nomination of Mr. Douglas was insisted upon. The speeches of the occasion bear witness to a lively apprehension on that score. But I find nothing to indicate even a suspicion of a premeditated de sign which was the real object of the conspiracy to promote this division for the purpose of procuring a defeat to the can didates of both sides of the party, and, by that means, to se cure the election of the Republican nominee, as the necessary condition of the casus belli upon which the rebellion was pred icated. The plan was to drive the friends of Mr. Douglas in the Convention into a separate organization, by the promulgation of a programme of the party policy which should assert princi ples he could not adopt and which the people of the North and West could never tolerate ; and, if that programme was reject ed by the Convention, to form a new party upon it. To this end a Committee was appointed to report the platform of the party. By some means, which do not appear, that Committee was composed of a majority in favor of the ultra Southern view. In the main body of the Convention many resolutions were sev erally offered looking to the construction of the platform ; and these were referred, as often as they were presented, to the Committee, either with or without instructions, as the case hap pened. ON THE REBELLION. 431 The prominent and distinctive question in dispute was The protection of Slavery in the Territories by the intervention of the National Government. It was manifestly the purpose of certain members of the Convention, aided by outside advisers who were busy in fo menting the discord of the body, to get into the declaration of the duty of protection, a covert recognition of the slave-crade, in accord with the judicial opinion of Judge Magrath. This pur pose first appears in the phrase of a resolution offered by a gentleman from Alabama, "That it is the duty of the Gov ernment to afford legal protection to all classes of property, slave or otherwise, in the Territories, or on the High Seas? After some delay and amidst much variety of movement, the same idea comes up in the resolution of another member, in which the phrase is significantly altered ; " legal" protection is left out ; the -term " slave" is omitted, and another clause inserted ; it reads : " It is the duty of the Government to pro tect the rights of persons and property on the High Seas, in the Territories, or wherever else its constitutional authority ex tends." Thereupon General Butler, of Massachusetts, now dis tinguished in a very different sphere of action, gives a perti nent hint that this phrase, of protection of property on the seas, might be construed into a design to reopen the slave-trade. The resolution then goes to the Committee. There, it is found that there is a majority of one in its favor. The vote is 17 to 1 6, upon which there is much secret rejoicing among the conspirators, and stealthy consultation with Mephistopheles behind the screen. After further deliberation, the Committee make up their report, and this article of the programme finally emerges to the view of the Convention in somewhat modified form. It now appears in the resolutions in this language : " That it is the duty of the Federal Government, in all its departments , to protect the rights of persons or property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends." The words "on the High Seas" are discarded, and the periphrase retained which legally covers the same proposition. 432 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE General Butler s hint had manifestly awakened some solicitude, and it was thought necessary jiot to name the broad ocean, lest members should become alarmed. The mass of the Con vention, as well as that of the country at large, was engaged with the question of protection of slavery in the Territories. the " wherever else" of the resolution might pass as an exple tive, in which the unwary might see no harm, or it covered the District of Columbia and the Forts, and so might escape im mediate observation The masters of the plot were -aiming at the possession of a weapon for future use, which, in due time, they could bring into service. They wanted the ratification of the principle affirmed by Judge Magrath ; and they got it. If this programme were adopted, what more distinct sanction could be given to the slave-trade ? What more certain than the defeat of any Presidential candidate who should stand upon it ? This was now the majority report. There were two minor ity reports. The larger of the two reaffirmed the Cincinnati platform of 1856, with some additions on other questions of policy. The other was made by General Butler alone, and pre sented the Cincinnati platform, pure and simple, without any addition. Upon these several reports a most earnest debate arose. Members grew angry, and it was very evident that the party was broken, and the plot in full career of successful achieve ment. Strong appeals were addressed to the mischief-making members, prefiguring the result of this quarrel and warn ing against it. Governor King, of Missouri, declared "that this platform would nominate Mr. Seward [then the pre sumed candidate of the Republican party] and make him Pres ident." Mr. Paine, of Ohio, " charged them to reflect, to pause in their mad career; to remember in advance what the conse quence of a disruption would be, and they would see how just ly the consequences would be laid on the South" To these warnings, and others in the same tone, Mr. ON THE REBELLION. 433 Yancey replied, " that the Democratic party must accept de feat with cheerfulness on a principle rather than seek success with its violation." He concluded his speech, says. the report, " by eloquently urging the Southern delegates to be true to their constitutional duty, and not to lend themselves to a pal pable wrong to obtain a present victory." This "palpable wrong," let it be noted, was nothing more than an adherence to the principles asserted by the Cincinnati Convention of 1856, in which he and several of his comrades threatened se cession and disunion if the doctrine he was now repudiating were not adopted. The great result for which he and others were struggling \vas the overthrow of the party and the success of the Repub lican ticket. This feat was now on the eve of accomplish ment. The Convention, soon after this, came to a vote. The majority report was rejected by 165 yeas to 138 nays. There upon a great stir arose. The Convention got into the condi tion of a beehive in commotion. In a little while a series of abdications began, and, before an hour had passed, the great er part of the Southern members had retired in dudgeon. The egg was hatched ; the breach was mortal. From that hour the Democratic party was an effete corporation, and the seed of secession was deeply planted in a rank soil, quickly to bourgeon into a Upas-tree of treason and rebellion, and to distil tears and blood over the happiest and most prosperous nation in the world. How this breach was followed up by the organization of the fragments into separate bodies ; by adjournment to Balti more and Richmond, and subsequent assemblage of both di visions, at the former city, in June ; by further abdications there ; by continually widening dissension ; by nomination of Douglas on one side and Breckinridge on the other ; and then, in due course, by signal defeat of both in the election, and con sequent accomplishment of the desired success of the Repub lican party, need not be told. All that has gone into the rec- 19 434 LETTERS OF MK. AMBROSE ord of our melancholy history, where it will remain forever to rebuke and frighten wicked ambition in all future time. I cannot, however, close this narrative without availing my self of a remarkable commentary upon these events, supplied to my hand by the speech of one of the most intelligent actors in the scene, and one of the most acute of its expositors. On the 23d of June, 1860, when the scattered Convention was again assembled at Baltimore, and the last abdication took place, Pierre Soule spoke these words : " I am not at all discouraged by the emotion which has been attempted to be created in this body by those who have se ceded from it. We, from the furthest South, were prepared. We had heard around us the rumors which were to be initiato ry of the acts which you witnessed this day, and we knew that the conspiracy, which had been brooding for months past, would breakout on this occasion,. 2ct\& for the purposes which are ob vious to every member. Sirs, there are in political life men who were once possessed of popular favor, and who considered that favor as an inalienable property, and who cling to it as some thing that can no longer be wrested from their hands. . . . They saw that the popular vote was clearly manifesting to this glorious nation who was to be their next ruler. More than eight or ten months before .the Convention assembled the name of that future ruler (Douglas) had been thrown into the canvass and was before the people. Instead of bringing a can didate to oppose him ; instead of creating before the people is sues upon which the choice of the nation could be enlightened ; instead of principles discussed, what have we seen ? An unre lenting war against the individual presumed to be the favorite of the nation, a war waged by an army of unprincipled and un scrupulous politicians, leagued with a power which could not be ex erted on their side without disgracing itself and disgracing the na tion. "When the Convention assembled at Charleston, the idea had not yet struck their minds that a movement, of the nature of the one which has been effected, could be based upon the doctrines of the distinguished gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Yancey, who has fathered this secession. It was presumed by those political intriguers outside of the Convention who were ma noeuvring the measures through, by which the destruction of the Democratic party was to be effected, it was presumed by them that it laid in their power, after raising the storm, to manage ON THE REBELLION. 435 and guide it. But it will be found, before forty eight hours have elapsed, that in that storm they are bound eventually to sink and disappear. For it is idle for Southern men to disguise the true object of that movement : Secession from the Democratic par ty can be nothing else than the disruption of that party at the very moment when the hopes of the whole nation are hanging on its continuing in power. Secession is a word intended to conceal another word of more significancy. If secession was to find an echo among the people of this great Confederacy, then no longer could this republic boast that the structure which its fathers cre ated with so much sacrifice and so much toil was a noble experi ment. Secession must beget disunion. Upon what pretence must secession have been predicted ? I wish not to do those distinguished gentlemen, who stepped out of this room this morning, the-injustice to suppose that they truly parted from you because of your having decided the question of internal organ ization in a manner that did not agree with their views. They may give this as a pretence. They may use it as a cloak to cover their desertion from the party, but the truth cannot be disguised : whether deluded or not, they are tools in the hands of intriguers and their course must necessarily tend to disunion" This is the speech of Mr. Soule when the Democratic par ty, having received the first blow of severance at Charleston, had reassembled in divided fragments at Baltimore, and there completed the dismemberment by retirement, from the major body, of the remaining few who had hesitated at Charleston. The contumacious fragment formed a separate organization, adopted the majority resolutions which had been rejected at Charleston, and nominated Mr. Breckinridge, a man of such popularity, especially in the Border States, as, in the estimate of the conspirators, would be certain to draw off a vote large enough to make the division of the party fatal to the success of either candidate. Breckinridge thus became the represent ative and symbol of the conspiracy, and the Breckinridge De mocracy, wherever you find it, North, South, East, or West, the very bone and sinew of the revolution. I ask you to review this chain of facts in the light of pre paratives to the rebellion. First. We have seen that extraordinary and sudden zeal of 436 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE certain leading Southern men to revive the African slave-trade as a topic of discussion. Second. The bold enterprise of Southern citizens in the actual pursuit of the trade, the successful importation of slaves, and the distribution and concealment of them by the conniv ance of planters, and even the derisive ostentation with which the trade was confessed and public opinion defied by the more zealous and intemperate of its advocates. Third. The decision of the South Carolina judge, and the remarkable sympathy of the community with those arraigned, and their immunity from punishment, or even social censure. Fourth. The covert attempt to affirm the principles of that decision in the Convention. Fifth. The preordained breach of the party.and the retire ment of that portion of the Southern members who were after wards the most earnest and zealous prompters and champions of the rebellion ; and, Last. Their organization of a new party j the nomination of a candidate whose popularity was a sure obstruction to the success of his rival, and a guarantee for the election of the Re publican candidate, in which event the casus belli of the pro jected revolution rested. J " ; When the groundwork of the rebellion was thus laid, every man who was implicated in the plot took his place. The great fact upon which the dissolution was predicated being thus made sure, it was forthwith announced in a thousand bar-rooms, in the resolutions of numerous popular assemblies, in the ha rangues of countless orators, and in every Southern press under the control of the conspirators, that if the Republican candi date should be elected the South would withdraw from the Union. Thus, months before the suffrages of November were deposited in the ballot-box, the secession of the States teter- rima causa belli- was a predestined event. ON THE REBELLION. 437 LETTER IX. STATE RIGHTS. JANUARY, 1865. When this insane quarrel of the South with the North first came to blows, the question between them, as exhibited in the debates of Congress, in the wrangling of the Peace Conference, and in the negotiations of the two parties, was reduced to this single demand on the part of the South : " We insist upon the right to plant slavery, at our pleasure, in all the free territory of the nation." An almost boundless empire of this free soil lay open.to settlement between the Ohio and the Pacific Ocean. The South said, " It is our right to set slavery in every acre of it, and we must have that right acknowledged or we shall rend the nation into fragments." The North replies, " Keep what you have within your own confines, but never will we con sent to blast that great free empire of the future with the curse of slavery." And thereupon the South drew the sword to as sert and maintain that very act of offence and insult to the sense and humanity of the age for which, nearly ninety years before, Virginia arraigned the monarch of England in twenty successive remonstrances ; of which all the colonies complain ed as a grievous wrong, and which Mr. Jefferson introduced into the Declaration of Independence as one of the chief top ics to justify the Revolution. To this point was the whole controversy ostensibly reduced when the South withdrew in dudgeon from further parley. Every other point was accommodated. Congressional inter ference with slavery in the States already prohibited, as all parties agree, by the Constitution was proffered to be secured against all future hazard by an irrepealable constitutional 438 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE amendment. The Missouri Compromise line was substantial ly restored in the arrangement of New Mexico, which opened every foot of territory south of that line to slave settlement. But all this would not do ; the unlimited privilege was insist ed on. Upon this a large majority of the nation took their stand ; and the South withdrew and put itself in battle array to fight for the extension of slavery into free territory. Four years of war have made great changes in the aims of the first belligerent. The South no longer fights for the exten sion of slavery. " We are fighting for our territory," says Mr. Jefferson Davis in one of his late messages to his Congress ; as if he wished to impress the outside world, as well as his comrades, with a pathetic sense of the sacred character of his cause. He would have the world believe that this ruthless and despotic Government of the United States has wantonly forced this war upon the South to despoil its people of their country, their homes, and their firesides ; and, indeed, it would seem that he had given this idea some currency on the other side of the Atlantic, when English statesmen declared our re sistance to the rebellion to be only a contest for empire. It was a shrewd device on the part of the South to per suade its own people that this war was got up to defend their right to their own soil. Nothing, perhaps, but the end to which this war is hastening will dispel that delusion. Victory for the Union will find every foot of territory just where it was before the strife began. Some owners may have fled from their pos sessions, that will be as they have chosen ; many will have perished, and all who survive may find much difference in the value of what is left ; but the law of the soil will be the same, the home and country the same, and our renovated nation will move onward in its grand career, the same beneficent protect ive power which it was before wicked ambition essayed to strike it out of existence. Still, it is true, the great mass of those who have enlisted under the banner of this revolt do really believe that from the first they have been fighting for their own homes. Even so considerate a man as General Lee, ON THE REBELLION. -. 39 the cummander-in-chief of the rebel forces, has said that he only took up arms to defend his own State of Virginia against unlawful invasion. Now, let any man tell us what rights of home or country were ever endangered in any State of this Union by the Government of the United States, until the revolting States themselves put them in jeopardy ? You say you are fight ing for your territory. If you are, is it not because your rash resort to unprovoked war has compelled us the people of the United States to fight for ours ! Were we not. most reluc tantly, compelled to fight for a whole section of our country which you were striving to wrench from us ? for our territory of Florida and our territory of Louisiana, both of which we brought with ready money, paid in good red gold ? Are we not fighting for our navy-yard at Pensacola, built by the nation, not for the convenience of the State of Florida only, but for the refuge and repair of our shipping, which from all quarters, plies in the Gulf? Are we not fighting for our forts, all the way from Sumter to the Rio Grande, which we had constructed at great cost, to protect our commerce from injury and insult ? Are we not fighting for our Mississippi River, that we may hold it freely forever for the benefit of the nation, without toll or tribute, or homage to any power upon earth ? Are we not, in fact, fighting for our rights in our State of Virginia, our State of South Carolina, Georgia, and the rest that have assumed, by proclamation and war, to oust us from privileges which be long as much to each of us as to those who seek to ex clude us ? Who can tell me why Louisiana is not as much my State as it is the State of John Slidell or of Pierre Soule, the two Senators who represented it in the Congress of the Union ? Mr. Slidell, a native New of York, and who lived there up to a ma ture manhood, chose to cast his fortunes in the city of New Orleans, He went with the same certainty of an assured wel come that he would have had if he had elected to make his new home in Albany. He was a citizen of the Union, and, as such, was entitled to claim all the privileges of a domicil in any 44:0 LETTERS OF MR, AMBROSE State within its circle. His citizenship in Louisiana was as full and as perfect as that in New York. Mr. Soule s case had less original strength than his col league s. He was a Frenchman, and had no foothold, like that of Mr. Slidell, until he gained the privilege of the national citi zenship. This, therefore, was his first step, without which he could make no career for himself in any State. With it, all were open to him. He also chose Louisiana as the theatre of his fortune, obtained his naturalization, and from that day found himself in a position to contend for all the honors an Ameri can citizen might win in any State in the Union. Here are two men holding high authority in the Government, exercising great influence over the affairs of the nation, and sent into the Senate by the choice of a State to which for a considerable portion of their lives they were absolute strangers, and into whose confines they had, perhaps, never journeyed until years after they had come to man s estate. Is it not somewhat startling to hear, after reflecting upon such an experience as this, men of calm and honest judgment, and of educated intelligence, maintaining as a sound, or even a plausible theory of this common-sense, practical Government of ours, that a State of the Union may lawfully I mean with out rebellion and revolution deny to me or any other citizen of the United States, residing outside of its borders, the same right of domicile and domestication, and right to pursue a path of fortune and ambition which has been so freely and prosper ously opened to the Senators from Louisiana ? Is it not still more strange that those gentlemen themselves should be found in the ranks of those who assert this right of exclusion ? The case of Messrs. Slidell and Soule I cite only a conspicuous example. Full three fourths of the whole South, bating the eminence of the position, stand in the same category, that of migrated citizens who change their domicile from one State to another mainly because they are equally citizens of both. This capacity to range over the Union, protected by a shield of uni versal citizenship, is the most vital principle of our progress \ ON THE REBELLION. 441 it is scarcely an exaggeration to say it is one of the most pre cious of our rights. It strikes me as one of the chief obstacles which must ever be presented to the reflection of those rash men who meditate a severance of the Union, that the great majority of the people, as distinguished from the leaders, will never willingly surrender this unstinted citizenship ; and that, whenever such a surrender is forced upon them by the passion or the artifice of revolution, the result will be but temporary, and the desire to regain what is lost a motive to ceaseless agi tation. The present rebellion is daily verifying this remark. Every man on the Northern side of the line feels that the pre tension of secession is an invasion of his personal right, while multitudes on the Southern side cannot comprehend what they are to gain by limiting the area of their privilege as American citizens. That doubt is now gradually breaking upon their minds for solution. The plea for this limitation or circumscription of citizen ship is attempted to be explained in a theory of State Rights, to the examination of which I propose to devote the rest of this letter. This subject of State Rights has been greatly mystified, in the popular conception of it, by the uses to which it has been put. The rights of the States, as practically demonstrated in the ordinary operations of State government, scarcely excite debate. Nobody denies them. Every one sees in them -a healthful and beneficent power which completely satisfies the people No one has ever thought of disputing the right of the States to make and alter their constitutions in their own way and at their own pleasure. We are accustomed to see them exercise every function of government within their sphere, without the imagination of a possible objection. They make laws, establish judiciaries, define crimes and punishments, erect corporations, levy taxes, construct public works, regulate education, in short, enact and do every thing appertaining to their internal government and domestic welfare, without a comment from any quarter to suggest a doubt of their power. 19* 442 LITTTERS OF MB. AMBROSE The only condition required of them in this wide sphere of ac tion is, that they shall do nothing which is forbidden by the National Constitution. These are the undoubted rights of the States, and might be exercised to the end of time without being questioned. The experience of almost a century has afforded the most abund ant proof that, in the orderly administration of these powers, they have been found ample to protect the peace and happi ness of the people, and to promote their prosperity. This formula of State Rights is intelligible to the plainest un derstanding. There is no complexity in it, no knotty question to puzzle the politicians ; and the great majority of the people of the whole nation would be, if let alone, and I have no doubt are, per fectly satisfied with it, as expressing the limit of State powers. Still there is, in the common acceptation, something in the very term, State RightSj which obscures this plain, practical demonstration of them, by connecting them with a vague im agination of some attribute too subtle for ordinary minds, some abstract, reserved power, which may be applied, in great emergencies, even to the dissolution of the Government. It is looked upon as a piece of artillery which may be brought out, on occasion, from a secret arsenal, to threaten the nation and put it upon its good beha.vior. This notion of State Rights comes up from a political school which, for nearly half a cen tury, has been indoctrinating the youth of the country, and especially the Southern youth, in its pernicious philosophy, breeding premeditated hostility to the Union. It has at last produced its proper fruit, in identifying itself and its disciples with this great, bloody, futile rebellion, in the doom of which it will find, also, its proper punishment. The distinctive doctrine which characterizes the school as serts an original, inherent, inalienable sovereignty in each State of the Union It affirms the States to be sovereign powers, possessing an absolute right to determine for them selves their relations to each other and to the whole. It main tains that, as an expedient of convenience, these States have ON THE REBELLION. 4:4:3 created a common agency to transact their common business in reference to matters of general or foreign concern, to which agency they have agreed, by a compact with each other, to commit certain described powers, with a tacit reservation of their right to determine, each State for itself, whether the agency lawfully performs, in any arising case, the duty assign ed to it, and, upon an adverse determination of the question, to decline submission, to nullify the proceeding, and even, in the last resort, to retire from the association. This agency is described as the Federal Government, which is supposed to exist upon no stronger or more durable tenure than may be deduced from this theory of State Rights. This conception of the character of the Union and of the powers of the Government has been of slow and reluctant growth. It was discussed at the formation of the Constitu tion, and rejected. It had a party then, and has had, under various conditions, a party ever since ; but it never has had the consent of the people, nor a majority of the leading minds of the country in its favor. The most distinguished of its ad vocates have been quite as distinguished among its opponents ; and it has been used and disused, approved and rejected by the same persons and parties at different dates, to suit the po litical emergencies of the day. It claims to have had its most authentic enunciation in the Resolutions of Virginia and Ken tucky, in 1798 and 1799, notwithstanding its positive repudia tion by the author of the first of these resolutions, Mr. Madi son, and its incongruity with the written opinions of the author of the second, Mr. Jefferson. It boasts of its support in the names of Calhoun, McDuffie, and Hamilton, as the doctrine of South Carolina, in 1832, notwithstanding the deliberate, studied, and cogent refutation of it written by one of these statesmen, and published with the hearty concurrence of the other two, in 1821. It has never, indeed, been a widely ac cepted doctrine, even in the South, until this rebellion found it to be the most convenient and effective lenitive to the con science of that multitude of men and women who were in 444 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE search of a pretext for the indulgence of the pride and passion that revelled in the fancy of a Southern dominion. Then, all at once, it became the creed of the party ; an article of faith to the insurgents ; an article of fashion and badge of gentility to their sympathizing friends outside of the line of fire. In reflecting upon these two aspects of the theory of State Rights that plain exposition of them seen in the daily admin istration of the State governments, and, in contrast with it, this ultra dogma of sovereignty it is worthy of remark that every State has thriven while it confined its ambition to the scope indicated by the first ; and that what discord, feud, and damage have marred the prosperity of any section of the Un ion, or disfigured the annals of any State, have been coinci dent with political aspirations towards a power to subordinate the National Government to a State supremacy. The question to which this review of the State-Rights the ory brings us is one of great interest : Are the States sover eigns, in the sense which claims for them a reserved inherent power to assert, in any event, a supremacy over the National Government ? in fact, are they sovereigns at all ? According to that scientific definition of sovereignty which we generally find in treatises upon national law, those States are not, and never have been, sovereigns. I mean by this to affirm, that, adopting the notion of sovereignty as expounded in the books, especially in the writings of European jurists, there is no such attribute of sovereignty in any State of this Union as belongs to an independent nation. Whatever quan tum of sovereign power exists in the individual States is deriv ative and secondary, not original or "inherent ; it comes from grant or permission of a higher power, and is subject to all the conditions that higher power may have imposed upon it, or may in future impose upon it. The present thirty-six States have grown up out of thirteen British Colonies and the territory purchased, or otherwise ob tained, by the Union since the adoption of the Constitution. It is to the Thirteen Colonies, therefore, that we must look ON THE REBELLION. 445 for any germ of sovereignty that may be supposed to reside in the States. Confessedly the colonies were not sovereign powers. They were corporations, existing by grants from the Crown. They were invested by their charters with a broad privilege of self-government, reaching pretty nearly to all the functions of domestic or municipal polity now exercised by the States. But still they were subjects of the Crown, bound, in many re spects, by the laws of Parliament, and liable to the forfeiture of their charters for misconduct Of course, such organiza tions could not be said to possess the character of sovereigns, in the sense in which that character is now claimed for the States. By what action or means, it may then be asked, could these colonies be converted into sovereign States ? I answer, among other means, such as the grant of the parent State, or its abandonment of the colony, such communities may be come sovereign authorities by conquest. A people may turn upon the power that rules them, engage in a war of revolution, and, if successful, they may acquire territory and indepen dence by right of conquest, and lawfully become absolutely sovereign. This leads us to inquire, Were the colonies converted into sovereign States by this right of conquest? Let us take a brief glance at the history of their transformation. The breach between the mother country and the colonies grew out of certain acts of Parliament and Executive interferences, which were regarded as infringements of the rights of the peo ple of these communities as English subjects. These griev ances were supposed to assail the political rights of the people of all the colonies. There was, therefore, a common cause of complaint. After much remonstrance from the people, speak ing through their legislatures, and through city, county, and other popular assemblages, it became apparent that the dis content was leading to the outbreak of a rebellion, and to the probable establishment of an independent government. This LETTERS OF MR. AMBRO8F. state of things naturally brought to the consideration of the people an inquiry into their capability to sustain a contest with the mother country. The purpose of such a contest would be to conquer a right to possess the country and gov ern it ; their only means to do this lay in the combined strength of the people of the colonies, marshalled in armies. The important question, therefore, was, How were these ar mies to be obtained and supported ? The answer came in a universal demand, from one end of the country to the other, for Union. Before any thing was attempted, Union was indis pensable. " Let the people unite and make common cause," was the cry from New Hampshire to Georgia. " Let us stand by each other, and, if justice be not done to our demands, let us apply our united force to the extinguishment of the British sovereignty here, and the establishment in its place of a sover eignty of our own !" This was the resolve that rang like a trumpet-note through the country. The great mass of the people of the several colonies had arrived at this determination in 1776. They had been discus sing questions of adjustment and redress in Congress for two years before this, in the hope of peaceful settlement with the Crown ; but their propositions were rejected, and the Congress of that year took the final and decisive step, called for by the people, of declaring the independence of the colonies, and making a direct appeal to arms to secure it. This declaration was made " by the representatives," as they describe themselves, "of the United States of America in General Congress assembled," and announces the act to be done " in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies." In this paper they take occasion to announce the princi ples of human right by which they held themselves justified in the great enterprise they were about to undertake. These principles found but little support in the political philosophy of that age ; they were, however, distinctively American, and have, from the date of this declaration, ever been regarded as ON THE REBELLION. 447 the true basis of our Government. Among other things, they announce that governments are instituted to secure the rights of the people, and derive their just powers only "from the con sent of the governed ;" and they declare, moreover, " that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government" on such principles as " shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." This sum mary of rights is followed by a statement of the many acts of usurpation and tyranny, on the part of the Crown, that were deemed sufficient to warrant the attempt at revolution to which this declaration was the prelude ; and the document ends with the momentous proclamation, "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States." This is all so familiar to an American reader as almost to require an apology for its repetition. But I have found it ne cessary to recall these passages in order to ask attention to three points presented by them, which I think worthy of notice : 1. That they affirm the consent si the people to be the only legitimate foundation of government, and the only authority competent to alter the form of government ; an affirmation which imports simply that the sovereignty of a nation resides only in the people. 2. That this Declaration was issued to the world, by the representatives in that Congress, as the act, and in the name, of " the good people of these colonies ;" and, 3. That in proclaiming the colonies thenceforth to be "free and independent States" it does not assume to describe them as sovereign States. They were pronounced free and indepen dent of any allegiance or subjection to the British Crown ; but whether they were to be independent sovereignties or integral parts of a future nation rested entirely, according to the prin ciples formally laid down in this same paper, upon the deter mination of " the good people of these colonies," in other words, " upon the consent of the governed," when the time should come to make a government. 448 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE Now, this was the starting-point of the new order of things. The war was just begun. What government the United Colo nies then had may be described as of the simplest form of rev olutionary, Provisional Government, suddenly got up for the emergency, and to be moulded into something better hereafter. The Colonial Assemblies or Conventions sent delegates to a general Congress to consult and to do what they thought best. This Congress was composed of but one House. The admin istration was carried on by committees. There was neither time nor temper to construct a government. The movement of the Revolution depended solely on the patriotism of the people and the spontaneous or volunteer obedience of the sev eral colonies to the requests of Congress. The people flew to arms from every town, village, and hamlet, and repaired to their several camps wherever they were summoned. Virginians, Marylanders, and Pennsylvani- ans marched to Massachusetts ; and in turn, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire sent their men to Virginia and Carolina. In action the whole country was one nation, strug gling for one object, the expulsion of the British power from the circle of the " Old Thirteen," and the establishment in place of it of the power of "the good people of these colonies." The contest lasted seven years. In the end, Britain was beaten, her dominion extinguished, her sovereignty wrested from her and transferred to another hand. To whom was that sovereignty transferred ? To those who conquered it. Who were they ? Was it Virginia ? Was it Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania ? No ; not any one of these, but all to gether. The sovereignty, then, went to all together, " to the good people of these colonies" who originated the war, carried it through, and made themselves a nation, with free choice of their own future organization. No one of the colonies, during all this struggle, singly de clared itself independent. No one had the power to maintain such a declaration, if it had been made. No one, consequent ly, possessed any capability to make itself sovereign. If, there- ON THE REBELLION. 449 fore, after the declaration of independence, any State or States became vested with any kind of sovereignty, it must have been by the grant, permission, or acquiescence (which is implied consent) of " the good people of these colonies ;" and this, of course, repels the idea of original and inherent State sover eignty. Now, it did occur, pending the war and after the Declara tion, that the States did assume to be sovereign. This is a curious passage in our history, which is marked by some strik ing demonstrations of a mistake made by our ancestors, in their first conception of the character as well as of the necessi ties of the Union they were about to establish. The Articles of Confederation were adopted in 1777, but not entirely ratified until 1781. They were the first expression of the idea of government for the Union. They were begun in an effort at government a year before the Declaration of In dependence, and at a time when, as Washington remarked, " No sensible man on the continent desired independence ;" when all hoped for satisfactory adjustment of differences with the Crown. The first outlines, therefore, made no reference to sovereign States. Yet it cannot be doubted for the evidence is clear that the Congress of 77 and its successors had a large majority whose conception of the new government did not go beyond the imagination of a League of Sovereign States. The Con gress that framed and adopted the articles explicitly declared the doctrine of State sovereignty in the second article, in the following terms : " Each State retains its sovereignty, free dom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." It is worthy of note, that, at the date of this act, the States had not come into possession of sovereignty, freedom, or inde pendence they were all engaged in the war to conquer these privileges, a war which had only begun. How could any of these States retain what none of them had yet obtained ? Much 450 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE more, how could each of them retain a sovereignty which not one of them had even pretended before this to assert for itself, and which the people the proclaimed source of all sover eignty had not yet even been asked to confer upon them ; which, indeed, they had not yet the power to confer upon them? It was a strange solecism in the political action of that old Congress, this undertaking to distribute sovereignty among the States, when they had not yet secured it for themselves ! But the act was liable to a still greater objection ; for, supposing that the States had conquered their independence, where did the delegates of that Congress, or any subsequent one, get au thority to declare a State a sovereign power ? They had just proclaimed it to be a fundamental principle that all lawful government rested solely on the consent of the people. Had they the consent of the people to this act ? Did they, indeed, ask the consent of the people of any one State to authorize them to form the government they were then devising ? No, not one. They were not themselves even elected by the people. They held their seats by the selection of their legislatures, not by popular vote. Did they, when their work was done, refer it to the people for ratification ? No ; the utmost that they did was to refer the ratification to the States ; and, in fact, the people never did act upon that scheme of the Confederation at all. Clearly, the whole proceeding must be regarded, when tested by the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as a usurpation on the part of the States. Still, it is true, the people acquiesced. The great business of the time did not admit of nice debates on points of power, and the people had too much respect for the patriots who guided the public coun sels to question what they did in their endeavors to establish the nation. And so, we may admit that the Government of the Confederation, during its short existence, did really recog nize with the acquiescence, if not the consent of the people the theory of the sovereignty of the States. The history of that old Confederation, its hasty birth, its halting and feeble ON THE REBELLION. 451 existence, and its early death, afford irresistible evidence of the utter incompetency of that State- Rights theory to answer the most ordinary needs of the nation. The Confederation was finally ratified by the States in 1781. It had been four years under debate. One of the prominent objections made to it, and which longest delayed its acceptance, shows how naturally the sense of the country, when called into action free from the influence of a political theory, turned towards a true perception of the rights that grew out of the contest of the Revolution. The difficulty that stood in the way of the Confederation was a question of terri tory. Several of the States claimed, under their colonial char ter, a width and breadth of boundary which gave them the area of an empire of yet unsettled land. Virginia, especially, held large tracts beyond the Ohio. The smaller States ob jected to a confederation which acknowledged State sover eignty over this vast, uncultivated domain. They objected that this domain did not rightfully belong to the States that claimed it by their charters, but. belonged to all the colonies, as a national possession conquered from the British Crown by the united arms and common resources of the whole. They contended, in effect, that no one State had gained any thing by conquest, and that what was gained was gained by all for the benefit of all. It was only by a promise of judicious com promise with this objection, looking to a future surrender of their claims, that even the States agreed to adopt the Confed eration. And now came the trial of the State-Rights theory. The Confederation formed upon it, even before it went into full operation in 1781, had been pronounced a failure. After the peace, in 1783, the failure became every day more manifest. The letters of the statesmen of that time are full of complaints of the utter inefficiency of the system the League of Sover eign States to answer the most indispensable demands of government. Congress was continually suggesting expedients of amendment ; the States were constantly endeavoring to rec- 452 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE oncile the two evidently incompatible ideas of national wel fare and State sovereignty by propositions to patch up the one with grudged and stinted concessions from the other. But all would not do. The country was fast " descending," as Wash ington expressed it, " into the vale of confusion and darkness." There was really but one remedy against this state of things, and that was finally recognized by Congress in 1787, by the resolution to call a Convention to meet in Philadelphia in May of that year, " for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several Legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." flow that Convention dealt with the question of State Sov ereignty I propose to make the subject of the next Letter. LETTER X. STATE SOVEREIGNTY. FEBRUARY, 1865. Chronologically, the State-Rights, or State-Sovereignty idea, lasted in theory ten years, from 1777 to 1787. Practi cally, it was a caput mortuum from the beginning to the end of its term. During the war the Government got along in spite of the obstructions of the theory, propelled by the patriot ism of the country ; after the war it did not get along at all. The public affairs were generally at a dead-lock. The na tional finances were in inextricable confusion ; the public en gagements were repudiated ; the current debts were unpaid ; the national treaties were unfulfilled ; the commerce of the country was left without regulation ; the States were in a con tinual quarrel with each other upon the extent of their bounda ries and their separate right to territory, which their united ON THE REBELLION. 453 arms had won from its former owner ; insurrection was threat ened ; the Government had no power either to make peace between the disputants, or to protect itself. The States were all sovereigns, and could conduct things according to their own humor. When the Convention met, there was a party in that body which rather seemed to favor this state of things. The small States were jealous of the large, and this sentiment was recip rocated from the large .States, by a disparaging estimate of the value of the small. But the great and wise leaders of the Con vention came to their duty with a full appreciation of the im portance of the labors before them. They came with an earn est determination to break up the rickety League of 1777, and substitute in its place A NATION. They came resolved to re store that principle of the Declaration of Independence which had, for ten years, been thrown into abeyance, the practical acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the people. An objec tion was made as to the extent of the authority conferred upon the Convention to create a new government. It was said that Congress had only given them power to revise and amend the old Articles of Confederation. The reply was: We shall pro pose our new government to the people, and, if they ratify it, it will be the act of the sovereign power of the nation, and so of supreme authority. Upon this basis the labors of the Con vention were conducted to the end. The result was, the pres ent Constitution was finally ratified by the people of every State assembled in convention. The key to a true interpretation of the character and pow er of the National Government, and of the relation of the State governments to it, will be found in that simple principle, so distinctly announced in the Declaration, the sovereignty of the people of the Union, or, in the language of the paper itself, " of the good people of these colonies." As my subject now leads me to make some remarks upon this question of sovereignty, I must premonish you that I en tirely repudiate and discard that scientific or professional defi- LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE nition of this term, to which I made some allusion in my last Letter, as accepted in trans- Atlantic treatises on national law, and which definition, I think, has been too broadly adopted into our own. I have never seen it noticed that our distinctively Ameri can form of government is founded on a basis which repels the European, or Old-World idea of sovereignty and allegiance. I am, therefore, perhaps, venturing on an entirely new ground, when I assert that the relations between the State and the people, as created by our scheme of polity, are not to be meas ured by the rule which determines the character of sover eignty and allegiance, as known to the monarchical forms of society. Sovereignty and allegiance are feudal ideas. They are correlatives, which suppose a chief on one side and a vassal on the other. They describe attributes and duties of persons, the sovereign lord and the liegeman. One owes pro tection, the other obedience. The liegeman, according to the old feudal custom, came into court and pledged himself, by oath, " to be faithful to the king and his heirs, and truth and faith to bear, of life and limb and terrene honor ; and not to know or hear of any ill or damage intended him, without de fending him therefrom." This was, in the primitive days of feudalism, the pledge of allegiance, when made to the sovereign, of fealty, when made to a superior or lord who himself was a feudatory to the sovereign. This idea of sovereignty and allegiance became, in process of time, expanded beyond its original narrow feudal limits, and found a place in our national law, as the expression of the relation between the subject or citizen and the State. But it has never lost, in monarchical countries, its personal attribute ; it is invariably, in such countries, exhibited as a personal re lation. Sovereignty is personated in the king ; allegiance is personated in the performance of the duty due from the sub ject to the king. It is easy to trace the transition of this idea into the field of the general rights and obligations which the law of nations ON THE REBELLION. 455 of the present age has laid down for the government of prince and people, and, more abstractly, for defining the relation between State and citizen. But it will be found that, through out this transition, the seminal idea is always preserved ; there is always present in it some vestige of its original reference to person. The sovereign is an august power visibly represented in the monarch ; his person is sacred, his authority paramount, he can neither give it away nor diminish it ; by a fiction of law, he never dies ; the man may abdicate, but the king can not ; his right comes from Heaven ; it is inherent and in alienable. The subject is the servant or vassal of this power, and owes to the possessor of it all respect, deference and ven eration. He is guilty, not only of breach of law, but of inde corum and irreverence, when he disobeys his sovereign. And when he rises against him in rebellion, or abets those who do so, he commits treason, which he is educated to believe is a species of parricide. These are the traditional ideas which come to us from the other side of the Atlantic, and which have very notably imprinted their character upon our philoso phy in denning the relation between the State and the citizen. We have, however, nothing in our system of government, either State or National, which precisely answers to this trans- Atlantic idea of sovereignty and allegiance, notwithstanding our seeming adoption of it in our national jurisprudence. We have no symbolism by which to represent either ; no ma terial, visible sovereign ; no form for the manifestation of per sonal allegiance from the subject. There is nothing apparent to exact that reverence of sovereignty or that humility of alle giance which are uppermost in the foreign conception of gov ernment. Then, again, we have nothing from which may be inferred an original and inherent right to govern in any State or National organization. We reduce government to a very simple principle, the will and consent of the people. We have little or no reverence for old forms or old ideas, but brush them away without compunction the moment we find them to be an obstruction. We have but little veneration for 456 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE those in authority ; they are our servants, and we change them when we choose, perhaps much too often. We invest gov ernment with no mystery, but look upon it as a machine of our own making, which we may take apart and put together as often as we may conceive it necessary for its better working. At bottom, our constitutions, one and all, are, in fact, unwrit ten. Reducing them to their ultimate term, they, may be ex pressed in one sentence, " The Government shall be what the people may, from time to time, ordain it." A convention may come together twice, thrice, a dozen times in a century, in any State, or in behalf of all the States, and adopt a set of fundamental ordinances which shall be good until another convention shall supersede them by a new enactment. That is now recognized law all over the country. These conven tions even make new Bills of Rights, in other words, new declarations of the inalienable, inviolable, and imprescriptible rights of American citizens, to hold good until another con vocation shall discover a fresh and better assortment of the eternal principles of human freedom ! With these differences of doctrine and practice between us and the Old World, it is very obvious we have no need, and, indeed, no possibility, of retaining the Old- World notions of sovereignty and allegiance. We have kept the terms, and that is all. Sovereignty, in our practical exposition of it, simply means the power to make and execute the laws, and implies, of course, the power to appoint agents to per form this function. That power resides only in the body of the people. The people appoint representatives to organize a government ; which government is required and contrived to discharge such duties as the people have agreed to consign to it. In accordance with this scheme, the people of the United States have ordained, by the Constitution, that the National Government shall exercise, in their name, certain sovereign powers, and shall, within the prescribed limits, also represent their sovereignty. So far, the National Government may be ON THE REBELLION. 457 called sovereign. The same people have also ordained that the States shall, in like mariner, be authorized to exercise certain sovereign powers. There were thirteen States, which, as colonies of the British Crown, had been invested with a power to govern themselves according to their own will, within a defined sphere of action. The people, speaking through the Constitution they had made, said to these thirteen States : " You shall exercise all the functions of sovereignty to which you have been accustomed, except in such matters as we find it convenient to prohibit. And, as we propose hereafter to create many more States, we shall give to them the same powers that are allowed to you, subject them to the same restrictions, and make them, in all respects, your equals ; that is to say, we shall confer upon them precisely the same amount of sovereignty that you possess." Now, whatever sovereignty may be said to reside in the States has this origin. It comes by grant from the people of the United States ; it was not pre-existent, independent, or original. It is a qualified, conditional sovereignty, which, in the European sense, is no sovereignty at all, and which, in our American sense, is the only kind of sovereignty that can exist in any State organism. The sovereignty is in the people, and not in the organized government : there, it is a represen tation, only, of sovereignty. The question then arises, Is there not a separate sovereignty in the people of each State ? That question I have answered in the last Letter, " No ; for the people of no State," as I have said, " ever proclaimed or conquered a separate sovereignty." The National Constitu tion absolutely negatives the claim to original or independent sovereignty in any State of the Union. That Constitution was constructed on the assumption, in which the whole country acquiesced, that a majority of the people of the United States, virtually represented in convention and sup ported, in a subsequent vote, by a majority of the people of the States, had full authority to propose, ordain, and establish the fundamental law for the government of the whole nation, 20 458 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE calling themselves, in the document, " We, the people of th t United States." These concurrent majorities the great law-originating power of the Union, the universally admitted representative of the national sovereignty spoke in the language of com mand and prohibition. They said to each State, " You must be careful to establish and maintain republican government within your confines ; you shall grant no title of nobility. If you fail to observe this law, the nation will interpose and legis late for you. You shall not coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor collect duties on imports." The phrase was peremptory : "No State shall" do any of those things which the people then thought it expedient to prohibit. Here is the exercise of a power above all the States. Who was it said, "No State shall do this or do that?" First, the representatives of the people of the whole Union, and, after them, the representatives of the people of the several States, by whose fiat this became law. "We, the people," said it. Could not the same authority have circumscribed State action within still narrower limits ? Yes ; and they did so. They said : " You shall not make war nor peace, nor treaties, nor have an army or navy without the permission of the nation. You shall not have a post-office, nor a custom house." In fact, they cut off from the States, one by one, almost every power or attribute which the world is accustomed to regard as a badge or sign of sovereignty, and left them in possession of little more than that municipal power which the world is equally accustomed to regard as the characteristic limit of subordinate governments. It is obvious, then, that the States had a master. How does this agree with the theory of origin al, inherent sovereignty ? Still, it is true that the States exercise sovereign powers : that is, they make and execute laws. To do this is one of the highest acts of sovereignty. But note, that it is one thing to exercise sovereign powers and another to be sovereign. The City Council makes and executes laws within its little circle ON THE REBELLION. 459 of government, and so far represents a fraction of the great sov ereignty of the nation. Yet it is not a sovereign, except on a small scale, in that only sense in which we may call a State a sovereign of larger dimensions. There is really no more inher ent and primitive sovereignty in one than in the other. In regard to both State and City Council, and going still high er, to the National Government, all these organisms are but representatives of sovereign power ; the actual sovereignty being resident only in the aggregate people, who can make and un make each and all of them at their pleasure. So, whatever sovereignty there is, comes by permission or appointment of the people, and must conform itself to the conditions of that permission. This is the limit and scope of State Sovereignty, and, while it is preserved within this limit and faithfully adminis tered by loyal States, it will be found to be all the State Sov ereignty that is necessary to render American liberty forever secure against disastrous assault. Indeed, I can conceive nothing more certain, in the long run, to break down demo cratic government and overthrow public liberty, than the per manent incorporation of this idea of original, inherent sover eignty into any section, subdivision or fragment of the nation, or anywhere but in the aggregate of the people. As the fact of sovereignty, according to our republican system of government, is exhibited in the making and execu ting of the laws, so our allegiance, which is its correlative, consists in nothing more nor less than in faithful obedience to the laws. A citizen has no higher duty I mean no compul sory higher duty than that. Every man who honestly and truly obeys the laws does all that our scheme of government demands of him in the way of allegiance. When a Virginia Senator, just at the date of the breaking out of this rebellion, said, on the floor of the Senate, " I owe no allegiance to the United States ; my only allegiance is due to the State of Virginia, and what I give to the Government I give through her," he but uttered the words of that sad delu- 460 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE sion which has spread mourning and sorrow around evei y fireside in his native State. If he really meant what these words would seem to imply, it was that he owed no obedience to the laws of the United States, except so far as Virginia per mitted him to obey them ; and that his State had the right, in the exercise of her sovereign will, to discharge him from the obligation of obeying these laws. What foundation is there for this vainglorious boast, " I owe no allegiance to the Government of the United States ?" Does not that Government rightfully make laws for the whole nation ? Are not these laws " the supreme law of the land ?" What title above this nay, as high as this has any State to command obedience to its laws, in opposition to those of the nation ? The " land" is the whole country, in contra distinction to a State, and embraces the whole round of States. " The supreme law of the land" is, by its very terms, as it is by its nature, the law of the only sovereign ; for there cannot be two grades of sovereigns. The people of " the land" are, individually r , the subjects of that law and owe it obedience. Collectively, they are the makers of that law, and may alter and amend it to suit their own wants. Their obedience to this law is the only allegiance possible to them. Their sovereign pos sesses no personality or visible existence to whom an act of homage, allegiance, or fealty can be offered. The sovereign to them is an abstraction, and exists simply in the law which rules over all. Allegiance is nothing else than Obedience to that law. The same kind of allegiance, and no other, we owe to the laws of the State in which we live. For the State derives its right to make laws to bind those who live in it from precisely the same source as the National Government, that is to say, the people of the United States. They have agreed that the people of New York and of Virginia may exercise the law-mak ing power within certain limitations ; outside of these limita tions, they have said New York, and Virginia and the rest shall not make laws. They have said, for example, " Within ON THE KEBELLION. 461 the sphere of your domestic affairs, you may make laws, tak ing care, however, that within that sphere, you make no ex-post- facto law, nor make any law impairing the obligation of con tracts j for these things we forbid. Outside of your domestic affairs, we deny you all power of legislation except that, if there be any thing we have not specifically forbidden you to do, that you may do, until we otherwise order. Let the cham pions of State sovereignty rack their brains over this point as long as they may, they will find no escape from this conclusion that the people of the United States, as an aggregate politi cal body, are the masters of the whole system of government, both National and State, and lawfully may, and always will, distribute power and arrange the functions of both National and State organizations to suit their own views of the growth and necessities of the nation. Now, whatever State Sover eignty is compatible with that general mastership of the peo ple, the States possess, and nothing more, It is impossible, it strikes me, notwithstanding all that is said to excite jealousy and distrust of this popular power of the nation, to conceive a safer or more wholesome deposita ry of the sovereignty of the Union than this. It can have no motive, to aggrandize one portion of the system under its control at the expense of another. There is no natural antagonism between the National and State organizations, but, on the con trary, mutual and incessant dependence. There is no neces sary conflict of interest ; wherever that has appeared, it has arisen out of an assumption, on the part of the States, of pre rogatives that were not in harmony with the common welfare. Every man of the Nation is also a man of a State ; and it is the aggregate of the men of the nation who form and construct both. It would seem that nothing could be devised so likely to keep both in harmony. Certainly nothing, one would think, would be so certain to render perfect harmony in the Union hopeless, as the independent sovereignty which is claimed i.n opposition to this theory. If these views of the sovereignty of the people, as demon- 462 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE strated in the Constitution, need further development, we shall see them more clearly announced in the provisions made for amendment. The power to amend, to alter or modify, is a power to con struct and establish. I know of no limitation to this power. Has any one ever thought of raising the question of its scope and extent ? Would it not be regarded as a very absurd ob jection to a proposed amendment, that the people of the Uni ted States had no right to make it ? I take it, that whatever amendment is adopted in accordance with the provisions laid down in the Constitution for making amendments, becomes at once the supreme law. This power may change, one by one, or all together, every feature of the Constitution. It may build States into empires, or dwarf them into municipalities j de fine State rights, abolish slavery, regulate suffrage, silence the logic of secession, and dispose of the thousand questions that touch the public welfare, with the full authority of a sovereign mandate. The power is unbounded. The only, but the all- sufficient, checks upon it are the responsibility of the represent ative to his constituents, and the vote of the nation in the act of ratification. This power to amend, therefore, may be said to exhibit the highest manifestation of the popular sovereignty. Now, let us see where it is lodged. We shall find that the Constitution so arranges the process of amendment that every proposition shall come from a major ity of the people of the United States, speaking through the representatives of the whole Union ; and shall be ratified by a still larger majority of the people, speaking through their rep resentatives in the several States. i. The proposition must be made with the consent of two thirds of both Houses of Congress ; those in the House rep resenting two thirds of the people of the whole Union ; those in the Senate representing two thirds of the Senatorial constit uency, which may or may not be, according to the nature of the division, the expression of two thirds of the States ; for ON THE REBELLION. 463 Senators of the same State, by dividing, may neutralize the vote of the State. To this mode of originating an amendment there is an alternative provision. Two thirds of the States may, by their Legislatures, require Congress to call a Nation al Convention to propose amendments. This convention is a single body elected by the qualified voters of the whole Union, and is, in the strictest sense, a representation of the whole people. 2. When the amendment is thus proposed and sanctioned by the people, in either of the forms of proceeding above de scribed, it is then to be submitted to a second ordeal of pop ular consent, by its reference to the Legislatures of the several States ; or, if Congress should have reason to believe that State Conventions, expressly elected by the people of each State, would more accurately represent the popular opinion, the Constitution gives it power to order such Conventions to be held and the question of the amendment to be consigned to them. In whichever of these two forms the amendment is submitted for ratification, it requires that the people of three fourths of the States shall thus give their consent to make it a law. When that majority is obtained, then the act is complete, and thenceforth the Government moves in accordance with this new command. In this process of amendment, it is to be noted that the al teration in the Constitution can only be proposed by the rep resentatives of the nation, assembled either in Congress or in special National Convention ; that it is the people of the Uni ted States, represented per capita, from equal districts over the whole nation, who possess this great sovereign prerogative of initiating a new arrangement or alteration of the fundamental law ; that the supreme law is in the keeping of the Union, and that the Union is the nation. When the amendment is thus initiated, I wish it also to be noted, that it is the people of the States who are called upon to express, through their Legisla tures, or if these be not deemed by Congress reliable expo nents of the popular opinion through State Conventions, their 464 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE consent to the amendment, by the concurrence of the majority of the voters of not less than three fourths of the. States. This is the machinery provided, by the founders of the Gov ernment, for the exhibition of that sovereign power which may make and unmake every fundamental law for the guidance and control of every National and State institution within the Union. When that power once issues its mandate, who can lawfully disobey it ? Suppose it were to say that no slavery shall henceforth exist within the confines of the Union ; would this command be disputed by any State in the circle ? If it should, would the courts uphold it in such dispute ? These questions are easily answered. They are answered already. The whole people understand them. The war has made them very intelli gible. The great majority of the people of the United States have said, " We must be done with slavery." How have they set about to make that saying good ? They propose an amend ment of the Constitution. Is there any inherent sovereignty in any State of this Union which can say, I will disobey that law ? It is a subject of curious interest, at this time, to look back to the Convention of 1787 and collect from the proceedings of that body the notions which its leading men entertained of their own power, in conjunction with that of the people, to regulate and establish the whole scheme of the Union. There were some of these men disposed to break up the State system. General Hamilton thought the States ought to be reduced to mere political divisions. Some even thought that the State lines might be altered so as to equalize their several territo ries. Randolph, Madison, and others were very emphatic in demanding a National Government. Patrick Henry would not accept a seat, to which he had been appointed, because he feared a National Government as hostile to liberty, a senti ment which he lived to retract. Some were vehement in insist ing upon a perpetual license to the importation of African slaves, while Mason, of Virginia, denounced not only the trade in slaves, but slavery itself, as a heinous national sin. What I specially note, as pertinent to my subject, in these ON THE REBELLION. 465 incidents, is, that on all sides it seemed to be conceded that, whatever might be the result of their work, whether it should ultimately limit or enlarge State authority ; whether it should establish a nation or a league ; consolidate power or distribute it, whatever might be done, the product would be an entire ly lawful achievement, and, when ratified, would be the su preme law of the land to which all must yield obedience. There is everywhere apparent in these proceedings, the con viction that the Convention acted with implicit faith in the sov ereignty of the people, as the fountain of all power, and as al together sufficient to ordain and establish the law which was to regulate both the National and State governments. There was one question raised in these debates, which was very significant in reference to this subject of State Sover eignty, and which is noteworthy now from the singular mis conception to which it has been exposed. Mr. Randolph, at an early day of the session, offered fif teen resolutions, of which the sixth proposed to confer upon the National Government a power " to call forth the force of the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfil its duty." Mr. Patterson, also, at a later period, offered a proposition, that "if any State, or any body of men in any State, shall oppose or prevent the carrying into execution such acts or treaties, the Federal Executive shall be authorized to call forth the power of the confederated States, or so much thereof as may be necessary to compel an obedience to such acts," etc. These propositions met a prompt dissent from Hamil ton, Madison, Mason, and others. They argued against the propriety or expediency of incorporating into the Constitution the idea of, what they called, coercing a State. Hamilton said : " How can this force be exerted on the States? It is impossible. It amounts to war between the parties. Foreign powers will interpose, confusion will increase, and a dissolution of the Union will ensue." He regarded the making of war on a State as an acknowl edgment of it as a belligerent, which would allow it to claim 20* 466 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE the right to form foreign alliances. This acknowledgment, he also perceived, would create confusion in the relations of the people to the Government, as it would enable the* State to assume upon itself the responsibility of the citizen s disobedi ence to the national law ; and, what is still more worthy of note at this time, he saw in this admission of a belligerent right what we may now consider prophetic imminent danger to the Union. Madison argued to the same effect. Speaking of the pre dominant theory of the Constitution as then proposed, "he called," says the report, " for a single instance in which the General Government was not to operate on the people individ ually. The practicability of making laws," he added, " with coercive sanctions for the States, as political bodies, has been exploded on all hands." Mason, in a previous stage of the debate, as we read in the notes of the Convention, " argued very cogently, that punish ment could not, in the nature of things, be executed on the States collectively, and, therefore, such a government was neces sary as could directly operate on individuals, and would punish those only whose guilt required it." It is strange that these opinions of Hamilton, Madison, and Mason should be quoted for the double purpose, First, of showing that they treated the State as a sovereign power ; and Second, that, being sovereign, it was their opinion that it could not, for that reason, be coerced, or as the term was used to signify be subjected to military attack and punishment by the Government. Their argument was the very reverse of this. It said : " Do not recognize, in the con stitution you are constructing, any such character in a State as might authorize the National Government to make war upon it, as a sovereign power ; if you do so, it will follow that the State may assert the right of a lawful belligerent ; shield its citizens from their responsibility to you, by claiming their alle giance to itself; and taking advantage of the war, as putting an end to all treaties and compacts, seize the opportunity to ON THE REBELLION. 467 retire from the Union. To obviate such a mischievous ^rela tion between the States and the Union, be careful to avoid any recognition of a State as a subject of national hostility, and construct such a government as shall have power in the lan guage of Mason to operate directly on individuals, and to punish those only whose guilt required it. " Hamilton, Madison, and Mason evidently thought there should be no more recognition of a power or a necessity to coerce a State than to coerce a county or a city. That, on the occurrence of a rebellion, it should be the province of the Gov ernment to act only against those, individually, who might be resisting, or aiding others in resisting, the due and orderly ex ecution of the laws, and by no means to allow any delinquent to shield himself from punishment by pleading that it was his duty to obey the laws of his State in preference to those of the nation. It seems almost incredible that any one should argue that a State could not lawfully be coerced because it is a sovereign power. The logical conclusion runs in the opposite direction. The only sound reason that could be given for arraying an army against a State would be, that the State was a sovereign, and entitled to be dealt with as only sovereign powers are dealt with, when argument fails to persuade ; for, it is only sovereign States with which nations are accustomed to make war. When States not sovereign transgress, redress is sought, not in war with the subordinate authority, but in the punish ment of the individual who obeys, its behests to the detriment of the nation. If the several States were what this ultra State-Rights doc trine asserts, sovereign communities, in the sense claimed for them, we have abundant reason, in the dreadful teachings of the last four years, to say that, but for the signal and total prostration of that theory in the catastrophe of the rebellion, the members of this Union would have been destined to quick disintegration and perpetual war. The resistance against this idea of coercion, therefore, by the great leaders of the Con- 468 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE vention, supplies another proof, if more proof were wanting, of their wise refusal to assign to the States any higher attribute of sovereignty than that qualified and restricted sovereignty which I have endeavored to describe in this Letter. LETTER XI. PEACE. JULY, 1865. I write a short Letter by way of conclusion. The great events which followed so rapidly upon the date of my last, have brought the task I have undertaken to an end. The col lapse of the rebellion, in the surrender of its armies and the submission of its leaders, leaves me but little motive to pro long the discussions presented in these Letters. It was my purpose to say something on that long-vexed question of Slavery, which has so earnestly and so diversely stirred the feelin gs of both North and South. But the interest in that topic is suddenly and most happily sunk in the fate of the rebellion. Slavery has performed its mission in the world, and is soon to be reckoned among the spent forces that have disturbed or assisted the progress of civilization. It is about to pass, with all its imputed merits and demerits, with its wrongs, its crimes, its false pretences, its transient service and whatever modicum of good of which it was capable, into the great storehouse of things finished upon earth, and to be henceforth committed to the accusing record of history. I regret to find that we have already begun to wrangle about the final disposition of the debris which the demolition of that institution has left in the political field. We are troubling ourselves with vain disputes touching equality of races, distinctions of complexion, and settlement of suffrage. The Providence that has conducted slavery up to the day of its extinction, I think, we may safely trust with the final adjust- ON THE REBELLION. 469 ment of the consequences. To me, it seems to be a corollary from the great fiat of that Extinction, that the emanciated slave shall rise, in proper and due progress of elevation, from his debasement, up to the enjoyment of every faculty and every right he may prove himself able to exercise ; and that the only impediment which may retard that progress will be found in the attempt to coerce or direct it, by the interposition of the power of the National government. Nothing, it strikes me, can be more appropriate, more certain, or better adapted to insure the success of his advancement, than the authority that belongs to, and is especially cherished by, the State gov ernments, for the regulation of their domestic policy. Let them pursue their own course, and I predict that not another decade will elapse before every State in the Union will find themselves compelled, by the strongest inducements that gov ern human policy, to use all the means at their command to make the negro a useful and contented citizen. I do not propose to give my reasons here for this prophecy, but I will merely invite your reflection to the fact, that four millions of people are now added to a scarcely equal number of population who heretofore dominated in the South ; and that the aggregate eight millions are hereafter to constitute the body politic of the same region. Does our past experience show that republican government is possible, with one half of the people permanently deprived by the other half of equal political privileges ? Reflect upon this question, and call to your aid the history of the progress of political power and especially of the right of suffrage, as these have been devel oped in our growth, and I think you will find no hesitation in making an answer. Again, I would suggest for your medita tion, an inquiry into the character of this emancipated popu lation, and ask you to notice that very prominent fact which every Southern man understands, namely, that the negro is by nature the most amiable, imitative, and pliable of all human beings ; and that, with kind treatment and friendly training, he may be made the most effective and every ready 470 LETTERS OF MR. AMBROSE ally, in all political enterprise, of that class of society which, in his state of slavery, exercised mastership over him. In the consideration of these qualities of this docile race, and these opportunities and inducements to create an influence over it, we may ground our belief in the certainty of the result I have predicted. And, lastly, I invite you to weigh the value of this re mark, that when the Southern representation in the National Legislature is doubled (as it will be by the access of this population), it is against every theory sustained by our politi cal experience to assume that the national will not demand the most complete equality of political right for that mass which confers this additional power, and claim for itself the benefit of the kindly sentiment and loyal attachment to the Union, which the conferring of this boon must inspire in the enfranchised population to whom it is given. The gratitude and fidelity of these people, thus earned by the government, the loyal citizens of every State will insist upon being brought to the support of the country, through the instrumentality of the vote. Referring to the obvious considerations which these views suggest, and which I offer without further discussion, I would, if I had any influence with Southern statesmen, advise them, of their own motion, to take time by the forelock, and provide in their several Constitutions that every colored man who had the qualification of residence, and who had attained to an intellectual culture that enabled him to read his Bible, should be invested with the right of suffrage. Such a provision would disarm all serious opposition to the prompt restoration of the States, lately in rebellion, to all their former privileges, and would disband the political parties which have attempted an organization to confer this right upon the lately liberated slaves. Touching this question of Restoration, it is pleasant to note how effectively that charitable purpose is already aided by the prompt support of the many old friends in the South ON THE REBELLION. 4:71 we have known in the past, whose stanch loyalty, though long repressed, has never been extinguished in the dreadful trials of the time. I have never abated ray confidence in their coming to the post of duty when the day of their service should arrive. They have come forth at the appointed time, and are fulfilling the predictions we have made for them. But we have to rejoice, also, that another auxiliary has come with them into this field of duty, which the country did not expect, at least so soon. Side by side with the most loyal, and even in eager competition with them, have come many of those who had plunged into the melee of civil war and either marshalled its forces in the field or led its counsels in debate. This marvel has appeared in conspicuous activity, as if to contra dict the ordinary experience of the world as gathered from all other civil commotions, and to furnish one more to the many incidents that illustrate that anomalous character of our people, which makes them incomprehensible to those who do not live among them, and altogether inexplicable in the philosophy of those who measure men and States by the standard of Old- World opinions. The submission of the South was to the country, a sudden and most happy surprise. It has been too prompt and too general to allow any one to doubt its sincerity. Whether under the influence of a mistaken estimate of political right, or of the illusion of some great wrong and the consequent duty of resistance, or whether impelled by thoughtless passion, or swayed by the mere contagion of a popular frenzy, the men of the south have fought for their cause, and their whole popu lation have endured its privations and its pains, with a bravery and a heroism, of which, in spite of our anger and the sacri fices they have forced upon us, we are secretly and personally proud, as brothers of the same lineage and citizens of the same country. It will hereafter be a point of doubtful deter mination in the judgment of history, which is most worthy of admiration in this war, the eager, and, shall I not say, the graceful submission of the conquered, as exhibited in the 472 LETTERS OF ME. AMBROSE frank confessions of the host that are now appealing to the President for amnesty, or the extraordinary clemency of the Government in dealing with its erring children. I notice these characteristics of the ending of the strife, as signs of a happy future, and as persuasions, to both sides, in favor of perseverance in that auspicious course of concilia tion and wise submission which will most certainly bring the occurrence, the achievements, and the results of this gigantic conflict of opinion and arms to be accounted, in our future history, as the great purifier and renovator of our Republican Empire, and as the notation of the beginning of a national strength and influence, both at home and abroad, which no people have ever before attained. At this point I finish my allotted work. If these Letters possess any interest to commend their perusal, I shall be most happy to learn that they have found a special facility of access to those calmer minds in the South, whom the engrossments of the rebellion and the exasperation of conflict have not so seriously disturbed, as to forbid a sober and honest recon sideration of the few but very important topics I have brought into review as the sources of that terrible conflict from which the country has just emerged. THE END. HON. JOHN P. KENNEDY. A new and uniform edition, handsomely printed on tinted paper (exclusive of the Ambrose Letters), 10 vols., 12mo. Cloth, $20.00; half calf, $40.00; or separately. HORSE-SHOE ROBINSON, (600 pages.) - SWALLOW BARN, - ROB OF THE BOWL, QUODLIBET, - LIFE OF WILLIAM WIRT, POLITICAL PAPERS, - JOURNAL ABROAD IN 1868 69, OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES, - LIFE AND LETTERS, BY TUCKERMAN, vol. 2.00 2.00 2.00 4.0J 250 2.25 2.00 2.00 His "Horse-shoe Robinson" and "Rob of the Bowl" will live with the sea romances of Cooper. Philadelphia Press. Few of our gifted countrymen, with so many and such varied excellence, are chargeable with so few defects. He is at the same time a bold and exquisite painter; his touches, to suit the subject and occasion, equally free and delicate. His style, as fine and chaste as Washington Irving s, and finished as is his most elaborate efforts, is always full of life. Southern Quarterly Review, 1852. The talent of our author is probably not inferior to that of Mr. Irving. 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