S.', , *^

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THE WORKS

OF

RUFUS CHOATE

WITH A

MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE.

BY
SAMUEL GILMAN BROWN,
PEOFESSOE IN DAETMOUTH COLLEGE.

'Ev jxvfnov (cXaSt to ^i(j)o^ icjiopu.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL, II,

BOSTON:
LITTLE, BRO"W"N AND COMPANY.
1862.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by
Helen Olcott Choate,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

BIVEESIDK, CAMBEIDQB!
tBINTED BT H. O. HOUGHTOIJ

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
Page
Speech in the Case of Alexandek McLeod  3
DeUvered in the Senate ofthe United States, Friday, June 11, 1841.
Speech on the Bill to Provide Further Remedial Justice in
the Courts of the UNiTEij States, by an Extension of
their Powers  24
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, May 10, 1842.
Speech on the Power and Duty of Congress to continue the
Policy of Protecting American Labor  72
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 14, 1842.
Speech on the Question of Annulling the Convention for the
Common Occupation of the Territory of Oregon; and in
Reply to Mr. Buchanan  125
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 21, 1844.
Speech upon the Subject of Protecting American Labor by
Duties on Imports  1 73
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 12 and 15, 1844.
Speech on the Bill for the Establishment of the Smithsonian
Institution  248
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 8, 1845.
MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
Speech before the Young Men's "Whig Club of Boston, on the
Annexation of Texas  267
Delivered in the Tremont Temple, August 19, 1844.
Speech cm the Judicial Tenure  284
Delivered in the Massachusetts State Convention, July 14, 1853.
Speech delivered at the Constitutional Meeting in Faneuil
Hall. November 26, 1850  311
Speech delivered in Faneuil Hall. October 31, 1855  327
Argument on the Removal of Judge Davis  342

iv CONTENTS OF VOLUME H. Page
Speech " on the Political Topics now Prominent before the
Country."  387
Delivered at Lo-well, Mass., October 28, 1856.
Ame^iican Nationality  4:15
An Oration delivered in Boston on the Eighty-second Anniversary
of American Independence, July 5, 1858.
Speech ON the Birthday of Daniel "Webster, January 21, 1859- • 441
APPENDIX.
HOR.E TnUCYDIDIANiE  454
Translation from Tacitus- •  494
Index  517

EEKATA FOR VOL, n.
Page 469, 10th line from bottom, read Corcyra for Epidamnus.
Page 470, 10th line from bottom, just before the figure 3, a sentenoe is omitted, viz : " They
"were willing also to refer the case to the oracle at Delphi,"
Page 480, Oth line from top, read one thousand for ten thousand.

SPEECHES

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

VOL. n.

SPEECH
IN THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD.i
delivered in the senate oe the united states, FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1841.

[The business before the Senate being the motion of Mr. Rives to re
fer so much of the President's Message as relates to our foreign affairs
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr. Choate spoke as follows :]
I REGRET to be obliged to consume a moment of the crowd
ed time of the senate in a discussion which can {)roduce no
practical results. But as the subject has been forced upon the
friends of the Secretary of State and of the Administration, it
possesses a good deal of interest intrinsically, and, therefore,
holding a place upon the Committee of Foreign Relations, to
whom it perhaps appropriately belongs, I venture to submit a
few thoughts upon it less maturely considered than I could
wish. I fear I cE^n add little to the splendid and masterly
speech of the Senator from Virginia. [Mr. Rives.]
I confess that when I read, a few days since, the letter of
the Secretary of State to Mr. Fox, on which the Senator from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Buchanan] has commented, it seemed to
me written with much ability, and that it ought to and would
satisfy the judgment and feehngs of the whole American peo
ple. The views it presented I thought sound, clear, and some
of them new ; the manner, not an unimportant consideration,
good ; frank, decided, not rude, not boisterous, not timid ; and
the whole tone, temper, and spirit elevated, national, American ;
worthy of the man, the cause, and the country. The objec
tions taken to it in this debate seemed to me to be its essential
1 A brief account of this case will be found in "Vol. I. p. 49.

4, SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
merits. By concealing just what he did, and by denying just
what he did, he had gone far, I thought, to withdraw this con
troversy about The Choline from the false position it rested
upon, and to place it on such grounds that it may be adjust
ed with ease and honor, or, if we must fight, that we may
carry into battle the approbation of our own consciences, and
the supports of a just pride.
So the letter struck my mind. Other gentlemen, or, at
least, one other, regard it differently. And, in the first place,
a doubt is intimated by the distinguished Senator from Penn
sylvania, whether the concession of the Secretary, that a per
son in the asserted predicament of McLeod is entitled to
immunity, assumes an accurate proposition of international
law. He argues that it does not ; and he holds the opinion
that we may well enough hang that person for robbery and
murder ; that we may do this in entire conformity with the
received ameliorated codes of international law of the nine
teenth century, and .without justly bringing on ourselves a
murmur of disapprobation from any of the families of man,
or any individual of any family. Sir, let us pause for a mo
ment on this great question of nations.
What is the concession of the Secretary of State ? Why,
only and exactly this : that a soldier or sailor — de facto such
— actually engaged in a military or naval enterprise of force,
under the authority, in obedience to the command, of his gov
ernment, and keeping himself within the scope of that author
ity, is not guilty, as the law of nations is administered to-day,
of a crime against the municipal code of the country upon
which he thus helps to carry on war; that he is not punishable
as for such crime by that country ; and that the responsibility
rests upon his own government alone to answer, as nations an
swer for their crimes to their equals. That is the concession.
He does not deal at all with the case of a soldier straggling
away from his colors to commit a solitary and separate mur
der. He does not deal with a case of alleged excess of au
thority. He supposes him to obey the precise directions of his
government, and, so doing, he declares him clothed with a per
sonal immunity.
It has been said in some of the discussions of this subject,
although not here, that McLeod left The Caroline after the

THE CASE OP ALEXANDER McLEOD. 5
whole object of the enterprise had been accomplished, and
committed an unnecessary and distinct and malicious murder
on shore. I can only say to this that no such fact forms any
part of the basis of the opinion of the Secretary. He had
either never heard of it, or he disbelieved it, or he assumed
that the courts of law, or the Attorney-General, would allow
its proper influence to a discriminating circumstance so im
portant. If you turn to the fourth page of his letter, you may see
that the murder for which he supposes McLeod is indicted
was " a murder alleged to have been committed in the attack ; "
forming an inseparable, very painful part of the entire mili
tary violence exerted to capture and destroy the vessel, and not
succeeding it. For the purposes of the concession, he takes
for true the express declaration of Mr. Fox, " that the transac
tion, on account of which Mr. McLeod has been arrested and
is to be put on his trial," including the homicide as an unavoid
able incident in it, " was a public transaction " conducted by
her Majesty's Government.
Such is the concession. I have the honor to submit, first,
that the concession is right, in point of international law; and
then, that it was the duty of the Secretary of State to make it,
and of the government to act upon it, exactly as it was made
and acted upon.
In entering on this investigation, then, you observe that,
to a certain distance, we proceed on all sides of the senate
harmoniously together. Thus, it is admitted by the Senator
from Pennsylvania, and by everybody, that persons taken fight
ing, or for having fought, in the battles of an open, general,
regularly declared war, are not responsible as for crime com
mitted by the act of fighting against the country which they
devastate and wrap in mourning and blood. They become
technically prisoners of war. As such, on a principle of pol
icy, as a mode of prosecuting war, they are subjected to re
straint, imprisoned, held to ransom, exchanged, and otherwise
disposed of, with more or less indulgence and humanity, ac
cording to circumstances. But criminals, robbers, murderers,
by the act of fighting, although the act involved the destruc
tion of property and life, they are not by the theory or prac
tice of any civilized race of men.
1*

6 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Thus far we proceed together. On this admitted principle
we all stand, and from this we all take our departure. The
truth is, the nations have agreed, and that agreement makes
the law of nations, that it is a duty and a virtue in the indi
vidual citizen — his first duty, his highest virtue — to be obe
dient to his own government. They have agreed to regard
him, as our Decatur, the elder Decatur, said of his children, as
the property of his country. Whithersoever he goes, whatso
ever he does, wheresoever he lies down, slain in battle in obe
dience to her sacred and parental command, it is, as the general
rule, not imputed to him for crime at all. His nation, the col
lective natural person, must answer it on the high places of the
world, and to the whole extent of the undefinable responsibili
ties of war.
If, therefore, McLeod had been a member of one of those
bodies of troops which, during the last war, occasionally passed
our line of boundary, burning our dwellings and killing our
people, and had been taken even at the time, and with the red
hand, he could not have been declared guilty of a crime against
any law of a State or of the Union,
Setting out from this admitted principle, the real question is,
whether the special circumstances, under which McLeod's gov
ernment sent him forth to this midnight work of strife and
blood, withdraw him from the protection of the principle of
individual immunity with which humanity and wisdom have
relieved and adorned the law of nations ? What were those
special circumstances 1 Exactly these. He was a soldier or
sailor, de facto, for the time, for the act, in a military and
naval expedition of force, planned and sent abroad by his own
legitimate government, having the right to exact his service to
the last drop of his blood, — sent abroad not to plunder, but, as
it represented to him when it called him out of his bed, and
disclosed its purpose, to do an act for the defence of the coun
try he lived in against invasion. This expedition was a single
act, not preceded nor followed by any other ; it was preceded
by no declaration of war, and, as this government alleges, it
was unjustifiable. Such were the circumstances ; and the ques
tion is. Do they withdraw him from the principle of personal
responsibility \
Let me say, then, first, that in proceeding to determine

THE CASE OP ALEXANDER McLEOD. 17
whether that principle shall or shall not be applied to a given
special case arising in the ever-varying developments of things,
the inclination of civilized States will be, and ought to be, to
take the principle largely and liberally in favor of individual
immunity, and of exclusive national responsibility. Every mo
tive which operated to introduce the principle into the law of
nations at first is a motive to an enlarged and benignant con
struction and application of it to-day. Its adoption originally
marked a vast advance on the ferocious systems of what we
call natural society. It was a grand triumph of reason as
well as of humanity. Policy and wisdom carried the world
up to it, as well as right feeling. It was reported to to re
lieve war of its horrors while it lasted ; to make it easier to
go back to peace, which is the true condition of man; to
ameliorate the stern lot of the millions whom, in one age and
in one country and another, force or patriotism crowds into
the ranks of their country ; and to lift up war itself from a
vulgar and dreary business of general butchery, to a ser
vice of glory, in which great souls may engage without deg
radation and without deterioration. These were the motives
in which the principle was made part at first of the law of
nations ; and every one of them is a motive to give it the
most expanded application in the light of this better day.
Sir, it is one of the brightest glories of civilization. Do not
cause it to be dimmed by a penurious and reluctant interpre
tation and application. To do so would be to misconceive
the direction in which the world is moving. I do not know
when wars shall wholly cease ; but I believe, I trust, that as
the world comes nearer to that time, it will regard war more
and more every day as an enormous evil, if a necessary evil,
and will desire to relieve it more and more every day by the
offices of Christian and of chivalrous forbearance towards in
dividual actors, — struck down, unarmed, and unresisting, '
Giving, then, to the law of personal immunity that enlarged
eff'ect vvhich the time and the country demand, let us attend to
the special circumstances, one by one, which mark the case of
McLeod, and see if they do or do not leave him the protec
tion which is thrown round the captive of open, regular war.
In the first place, observe that the expedition on which he
went out was an expedition of war. It was not an expedition

8 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
to rob the mail, or to rob a hen-roost, or to throw an assassin
or spy into an enemy's camp, by which happy analogies we
have had it illustrated. It was an enterprise of war, under
taken under the iron responsibilities, surrounded by the iron
rights of war. Its exact legal denomination is " informal,
insolemn hostility." Let us call things by their right names,
and hold England and hold ourselves up consistently to this
view of the transaction. Look at it. There was a forcible'
temporary occupation of our territory by an armed foreign
body, acting in organization, sent across by a foreign govern
ment as a government, — not for plunder, but as an alleged
grave measure of state policy, — for the alleged defence of its
own soil and its own law against revolutionary invaders from
without. What sort of act is that. Sir ? The mover is a
government ; the inducement a high reason of state ; the in
struments and the effects such as ordinarily do the work, and
mark the giant tread of war. Armed men violently assail a
vessel moored on our waters, owned by our citizens, — repos
ing, as we allege, beneath the protection — not forfeited —
of the folds of our flag. It is the cry of brief but actual
battle, which rises above the murmur of that onward, unre-
turning stream. The peace of our territory was disturbed;
its sanctity was violated ; the charmed life of an American
citizen was taken in fight; the property of an American
citizen — itself part of the general wealth of the community
— was destroyed. This, Sir, in the language of the pub
licists, is " informal hostility " against the United States ; and
the responsibility of England, who ordered it to be commit
ted, and the immunity of the soldiers who enforced the order
with the bayonet and cutlass, result, of course, according to
the principle on which, as I have said, we all take our stand,
and in which all publicists agree. I do not say that by this
act England intended to begin a war on the United States
or to impair our strength, diminish our treasure, or insult
our flag as a nation. Certainly not. But the act which she
does is to invade our territory forcibly and unlawfully for the
purpose of reaching and destroying the property of one of
our citizens, which she had no right so to reach and so to
destroy, and to effect that purpose by military violence and
by shedding innocent blood in battle. And this act is hostil-

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. 9
ity against us because our rights are outraged, — and they
are outraged by the methods and the processes and according
to the forms of war ; and because every nation and every
man must be holden to intend the acts which he does and
their necessary consequences. How do you distinguish this
proceeding from the attack on Copenhagen in 1808, to which
the Senator from Virginia alluded last evening ] What was
that transaction 1 England, cherishing no hostile feeling
against Denmark, (for Denmark, like herself, was actually in
arms against the Emperor of the French,) conceived a fear
that that ancient, gallant, but not very powerful nation might
fall before him ; in which case her sixteen ships-of-war
would become his, — a formidable accession to the strength
by which he was urging forward his aim of universal do
minion. Thereupon she sent Admiral Gambier to Copen
hagen, bombarded it, killed and wounded above a thousand
persons, and carried off" the whole Danish fleet. That is,
she forcibly invades the Danish territory for the purpose of
possessing herself of divers ships, of which, as against Den
mark, she had no right to take possession, — not for the
purpose of weakening or insulting her, but to prevent their
becoming, in other hands, the instruments of annoyance
against herself. So here. She invades our territory with
military force for the purpose of possessing herself of a
vessel, of which, as against us, she had no right thus to
take possession, — not to weaken or insult us, but to pre
vent its being, in other hands, the instrument of annoyance
against herself. The cases are alike cases of informal war
against the nation whose national rights are invaded. In
the affair of Copenhagen, the object of the invasion was
the capture of Danish government ships. If, instead of
that, it had been Danish merchant ships, — lest their cargoes
might go to fill the coffers of France, or to transport French
munitions of war, — would the act have been at all the less
an act of hostility against Denmark 1 Nay, if Denmark
had been neutral, and the object had been to cut out a French
ship which had fled to Copenhagen for shelter, it would still
have been a hostile aggression against Denmark herself. The
attack upon Copenhagen was upon a grander scale than that
upon The Caroline, — mbre ships, more men, greater names.

10 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
a more picturesque arrangement of the spectacle of war.
But the essential character, the legal name, the legal conse
quences — national and personal — were the same. Sir, if
one government trespasses on the rights of another by the
employment of warlike instruments, it is, to the extent of
the trespass, war on the injured nation.
But I advance to a second and far more important circum
stance. The expedition in which he served was the act of
a government competent to compel him to serve. Indepen
dent of or prior to any knowledge or approval of the act by
the mother-country, it was so. I wholly reject the sugges
tion that this daring enterprise was at first an unauthorized
proceeding of individuals, and that it subsequently became
the act of a government by ratification. From beginning to
end it was the work of a government, and of a government
having the right to exact McLeod's obedience to the last
drop of his blood. Who planned and conducted the attack ?
The Colonial authorities. Such is, for substance, the explicit
declaration of Mr, Fox, Such is the legal conclusion from the
facts stated by Sir Francis Head in his despatch of the twen
tieth of January, 1838. Sir, the matter stands exactly thus:
The Colonial authorities specially empowered Colonel McNab
to defend her Majesty's territories, and to defend her Majesty's
subjects. Such is the concurrent statement of Mr. Fox and
Sir Francis Head. For this purpose they expressly empow
ered him to adopt all needful defensive measures ; and they
thereby clothed him, by inevitable implication, with the dis
cretionary power of judging what measures were needful. In
the exercise of that discretion, he judged this measure to be
needful, and he adopted it. Now, for the protection of the
soldiers by whom it was achieved, it is precisely as if the
Colonial authorities had directly and in terms planned and
commanded it. Colonel McNab, for this purpose, conclu
sively represented them. How could a common soldier pro
nounce or conjecture that the judgment of the official repre
sentative was erroneous'? Sir, he had the right, and was
bound to assume it to be the judgment of the Colonial au
thorities. And who were they 1 Why, as between them
and McLeod, and for the purposes of this question of indi
vidual immunity as between McLeod and ourselves, they were

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. J J
his rightful and only government. Nice questions may be
moved on the competency of a Colonial government, from its
subordinate relations to the imperial head, to set on foot an
enterprise of war. But it is everywhere conceded that such
a government may undertake defensive war. The mother-
country, by the act of establishing it, clothes it with the
power, and imposes on it the duty of defending itself; and
it clothes it also with the power of judging for itself, in the
first instance, how that duty shall be done. When, there
fore, it resolves that a particular measure of war is necessary
for its defence, and that the crisis requires a blow to be
struck at once, and without waiting for advice from the par
amount power at home, ^it may call the whole Colonial pop
ulation to arms by day or night ; and obedience to such a
call is as rightful as unavoidable, and as effective for individual
immunity as the obedience of a conscript or an impressed sea
man. Such was this case. Was McLeod to say that the
Colonial authorities misjudged on the question of necessity 1
They told him the defence of the territory and of the consti
tution of Upper Canada required this act. Did he know
better 1 Did he command a wider horizon of view 1 Could
he be sure he had all the elements of a sounder opinion 1
Consider that to the Colonial residents the Colonial govern
ment is everything. It is all of majesty, of monarchy, of
aristocracy that he ever sees in his life. To that all his duties
appear to be owing ; and consider, too, that the spirit of this
grand principle of individual responsibility is, that bond fide
obedience to his actual and lawful government on a requisition
of warlike service shall never be reckoned a crime in any
man. You have before you, then, the case of a government com
manding a subject who was bound to obey, to shoulder his
musket for the defence of his country. It is true, the Senator
from Pennsylvania tells us that McLeod was a volunteer. But
he deduces no legal conclusion from the fact ; undoubtedly be
cause he remembers that, by the admitted doctrine of inter
national law, no distinction is recognized between volunteer
and any other soldiers. He will remember that Vattel, at
page ^Ol, is a direct authority for this. In the reason of
the case there can be no distinction. The regularly enlisted

12 \. •¦' SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
soMteE engages voluntarily at first for a longer term, and
for all service; the volunteer engages for a shorter term,
arid for a special service. But both alike go forth to execute
an authoritative public will, and both stand, therefore, on the
same plane of immunity and hazard. Consider, Sir, what a
great concern of all nations it is, — and of ours more than all
others, — to hold a rule of international law on this subject that
shall make their inhabitants willing and ready to leap to arms,
at half a moment's warning, at the midnight cry of their
country. You have, then, I repeat, the case of a government com
manding a subject to go forth to an enterprise of war. Why
is he not, then, within the terms and spirit of the great princi
ple of immunity which we all agree surrounds the soldier of a
formal and public war 1 What are the peculiarities that dis
tinguish this particular service from the general trade of war 1
Why, Sir, they are said to be these : that it was a single act of
hostility, not preceded nor followed by any other, not preceded
by a declaration, and wholly unjust. This is all true, but for
the objects of this inquiry it is wholly immaterial. Sir, publi
cists and the practice of nations recognize various modes,
kinds, and degrees of hostility. War is not always general
or " perfect," nor is it always preceded by a declaration. It
sometimes begins and ends with'one single crushing blow. Such
was the attack on Copenhagen in 1801, and that in 1808. It
may be limited to one single act of reprisals, by a single indi
vidual, under a license communicated to him alone. A foreign
power has seized his ship, and his own government gives him
letters of marque to help himself to another. In point of fact,
too, war often begins without any declaration at all, at home or
abroad. The bolt outruns the flash. Modern history is full
of such instances; but I spare you the rehearsal of them.
Now, Sir, what I would say, is, that for the purposes of immu
nity to the soldier and sailor, all these modes, kinds, and de
grees of war, come exactly to the same thing. They are all,
and all alike, modes of governmental action, involving only
governmental responsibility. In many things they certainly
differ one from another. Some of them are more chivalrous,
more magnanimous, more conformable with a strict and punc
tilious proceeding, and a technical law of war, than others.

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD.
Some of them afford less ground of complaint to the wf ern^
ment assailed than others. But, for the purpose of peS^agaJ
irresponsibility, they are all one and the same thing. In reason
it must be so. Consider that a, leading object of this principle
of immunity is the protection of the unfriended instruments of
ambition or patriotism who furnish the rank and file of war.
It is to protect the common soldier. And what an unavailing,
uncertain, ensnaring thing it would prove for him, if his title
to it depended on such shades of diversity as these ! How
does he know whether the war, to which you hurry him away
from all that is dearest to him in the world, is just or unjust 1
How does he know by what heralds of declaration it has been
preceded ] How does he know whether the desperate midnight
enterprise, for which you have called him up from sleep, is to
be a single enterprise, or whether it is designed to kindle the
fires of a war that shall encircle the world ] Sir, he kn'ows
only that his own government, in obedience to which he was
bred, that the land of his birth, — that the land of his fathers'
graves, bids him go forth ; and that, if he shrinks for a mo
ment from his post when the storm of battle rages highest, he
dies by the hands of his officers ; and he goes forth relying on
the armed but manly justice of civilized war.
And so are all the authorities. The Senator from Virginia
recited them so copiously to you last evening, that I shall spare
you the repetition, and content myself with a reference or two.
The Senator from Pennsylvania and the Secretary of State
tell you that the attack on The Caroline was unjust. But look
into Vattel, on pages 380 and 383, and Rutherforth, second
volume, page 546, and you find that they concur that the in
justice of the war does not affect the soldier's title to immu
nity. If it did, the nations would at once return to the
murder of prisoners, for was there ever a war in which each
belligerent did not think his antagonist in the wrong 1
But you say this was only a single act of hostility, break
ing out in a time of general peace, unannounced by any decla
ration. So it was. But Rutherforth expressly declares, that
this does not withdraw it from the law of immunity. I read
at large the passage from ,page 54i8 of his second volume, and
commend it to the meditations of the Senator from Pennsyl
vania. " This external lawfulness, in respect of the members
VOL. II. 2

14. SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
of a civil society, extends to public wars of the imperfect sort,
to reprisals, or to other acts of hostility."
Such is the doctrine of this publicist, vindicated and illus
trated by a masterly train of reasoning ; approved by the
heart and judgment of universal civilized man. Against this
authority there cannot be placed one solitary act of a Christian
nation for the last five hundred years, nor one word of any
writer who undertakes to record the existing systems of inter
national law. What is the nation now on earth, or descended
into the graves of empire — where is the modern Christian
nation that has shed the blood of a prisoner because the war
to which his government detached him was informal, insolemn,
unannounced by a declaration, beginning and ending with one
single act ? Call up the nation, if such there is or has been,
and let it answer to the outraged spirit of law ? Did Den
mark claim the right to do such an atrocity — humbled and
exasperated by the repeated bombardments of her capital —
did that ancient and gallant race ever dream of avenging the
defeats of the castle by the triumphs of the gallows'? Did
Spain, the most formal, the most punctilious of governments,
and adhering the most tenaciously to the slow and prescriptive
solemnities and technicalities of the old fashions of war — did
Spain dream of it when, in 1804, England, in a time of peace,
intercepted her treasure-ships returning from America, and
captured or destroyed them ?
Nor can you find, as I have said, a word in any approved
expounder of the actual law of nations, to oppose to the text of
Rutherforth. Dicta of Grotius seem to conflict with it. But
they only seem to conflict with it. Even these the Senator from
Pennsylvania has not availed himself of, because he knows that
Grotius, admirable for his genius, his studies, his most enlarged
and excellent spirit, lived too early to witness the full develop
ment of his own grand principles and the accomplishment of
his own philanthropic wishes. The existing law of nations has
been slowly built up since his time, and to learn it we must
have recourse to writers far his inferiors in capacity and learn
ing, but fortunate in being able to record the ameliorated
theory and practice of a better day than his. From no one of
these can you cite anything in opposition to the authority I
have relied on. The Senator from Pennsylvania thought he

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. -[^
had discovered some such doctrine as he needs in the '}5th
section of book 2d, chapter 6th, of Vattel. But the Senator
from Virginia was entirely accurate in his observation upon
this passage ; that it plainly refers to the case of an individual
acting without authority from his government, and to nothing
else. And then, in support of the position of Rutherforth, I
may remind you that, as the law of nations is holden now, no
war requires to be preceded by a declaration. (Martens, 274< ;
2 Wheaton's Laws of Nations, 12 ; 1 Kent's Commentaries,
54), 2d edition.) Defensive war never required it, accord
ing to any theory. (Vattel, 317.) But it was defensive war
to which McLeod's government assured him that he was sum
moned forth. The want of declaration, therefore, cannot affect
him, unless we are guilty of the indecent and ludicrous bar
barity of requiring him to judge better than his government
on the necessity of resorting to a particular measure of armed
resistance to a threatened invasion,
I submit, then. Sir, that McLeod is not responsible as for
crime against the municipal law of New York or of this Union
by participating in this act of English national wrong. Crim
inal in England, in him it was no crime. Let me add that if,
in thoughtlessness or anger, we had stooped to shed his blood,
it would have impressed a stain on the radiant flag of our
pride and love which a hundred victories, aye, a hundred years
of victory, would uot wipe away.
The concession of the Secretary of State was right, then,
in point of international law. But the Senator from Pennsyl
vania thinks he ought not to have made it, right or wrong, I
submit, then, in the second place, that he ought to have made
it, and the government to have acted on it, exactly as it was
made and acted on.
What was the duty of the Secretary of State on the 12th
of March last, when McLeod, guilty of no manner of crime
against the law of New York by participation in the attack on
The Caroline, had been indicted, imprisoned, and ordered for
trial to be had on the 22d of March, as for such crime, under
circumstances justifying a reasonable anxiety, lest he might fall
a victim to a natural and a tremendous popular excitement ;
and when her Majesty's minister came forward, announced the
doctrine of international law, — which we all know to be just, —

16 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
and demanded that McLeod should be holden entitled to im
munity under it "? What was the Secretary of State to do '?
Should he have wrapped his diplomatic mantle about him and
have answered, " Sir, I do not know about your doctrine of
international law ; the American government is not advised
exactly whether it may hang prisoners of war or not. Besides,
it happens to have nothing at all to do with the matter;
McLeod is in the hands of the State of New York, a great
and patriotic State, Mr. Minister, giving forty odd electoral
votes ; she will do what is right ; if she hangs him, why then
we shall know that he deserved it ; and if she does not, so
much the better for himself " ^. Should he really, so saying, have
bowed the minister out, and have retreated into an Epicurean
heaven of indifference and non-committal, until he aud you were
startled by the thunder of an enemy's cannon, — a music I ac
knowledge at which a brave nation has no great objection at
any moment to wake up ? No, Sir, I submit on the contrary,
that the duty of our government was perfectly clear ; to avow
its acknowledgment of the doctrine of international law ad
vanced by the minister ; to declare its purpose to do what it
constitutionally might to secure McLeod the benefit of it ; to
do it, and then, having removed this disastrous interlocutory
controversy out of the way, to demand satisfaction at once of
England for the burning of The Caroline, as that language is
understood among nations of the first class. To simplify the
matter somewhat, suppose that McLeod had at that moment
been in our jail, in our courts, instead of those of New York,
then, I repeat, it was most palpably our duty to have conceded
the proposition of law; to have expressed our assurance that
the courts would acquit him of the accusation of crime against
our municipal codes, and even that the Attorney-General repre
senting the government would enter a nolle proseqid, thus
committing him to the disposal of the Executive as a prisoner,
or a quasi prisoner of war, or whatever else his legal character
might be ; and then and thus having washed our hands clean,
and set ourselves right before God and man, to call this island-
mistress of a thousand ships-of-war to instant account.
That this was the duty of our government, is too plain to
be debated. Was it not its duty to cause this nation to keep
the law of nations ? Was it not its duty to be just % And was

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD.

17

not this bare justice to McLeod, to England, to the universal
spirit of humanity ? Was it not its duty to preserve peace, if it
might be had with honor, and, if war must come, to secure us
one in which a Christian people might draw its sword ^ Now,
Sir, the difficulty was, that, on the twelfth of March, we were
in an eminently false position. With ample materials of the
highest tone of complaint, perhaps even of reprisals or war
against England, for her conduct towards us, here she was
holding us up before all the world, for a little piece of our
own conduct, in which we were, or were apparently, just about
to be entirely in the wrong. With the burning of The Caro
line, with the groundless yet pertinacious grasp of our territory
in the north-east, with the repeated seizures and searches of our
ships at sea to complain of and go to war about, — if a wise and
moral people had a taste for such entertainment, — we were ac
tually just about compelling England to declare war on us for
hanging one of her soldiers because he did not run away from
his colors ] Why, Sir, this was not a position for men of sense
to stand on long enough for her Majesty's minister to pull off" his
hat. Policy, honor, justice, honesty, humanity all required us
to quit it in an instant. Why give England such a perilous
advantage as to make up a false issue like this 1 Why unite
all her classes, and every man in every class, in what they
must think a holy war '? Why alienate the sympathies of the
world by such a thing ] Why commit a blunder as well as a
crimed Why forget that he is trebly armed that has his quarrel
just ? Why shock and shame the pride of America by turning
away from England to strike down McLeod? .Sir, if you
speak of blows, I believe the people of this country would
choose to be seen aiming full at the front of the proud and
giant master, rather than dragging the servant, unarmed, un
friended, and handcuffed, to the gallows. They feel that no
laurels are to be won in such a field by a nation of gallant
men, of men of honor, and of Christians. They will seek
those laurels rather where they do naturally grow, far up on
the " perilous edge of battle when it rages." Sir, I was just
now told that the late Chief M^strate observed to a friend,
some time during that fleeting month of his administration,
that in a just cause, if congress would give him men and
money, he had no objection to going into a war with England ;
2*

18 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
but that he could not bring himself to buckle on his armor and
take the field against Alexander McLeod. I can appreciate
the disinclination of the kind, brave, and just old man to such
a service. I repeat, then, Sir, that if, on the twelfth of March, McLeod
had been awaiting trial in the courts of the United States, we
ought to have replied to the demand of her Majesty's minister
thus : We admit your proposition of international law ; we
are not quite so rude and recent among the nations as not to
know the elements or the code that knits the families of the
earth together. From this accusation of municipal offence
your subject is safe. And now will you in your turn inform
us (for three years we have waited in vain to know), on what
pretence her Majesty's forces, at the dead hour of night,
crossed the inviolate line of our boundary, invaded our soil,
dishonored our flag, wasted the property and shed the blood of
American citizens?
It happened, however, that at the time when this demand
was made, McLeod was awaiting his trial in the courts of
New York. He was in a New York prison, under New York
process ; and the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania
insists that for this cause, at least, the governraent should have
done nothing, and said nothing to the demand, but just have
directed Mr. Fox to tell his story and carry his law to New
York. We should have made no concessions of the legal
principle ; we should not have dared to communicate to the
Executive of that State the official evidence of the claim and of
the doctrine. of England, and our own opinion of it; we should
not have lifted a finger ; we should have stood speechless, un
conscious, innocent, and dignified, to see England, New York,
and McLeod settle this little concern of national law, peace,
war, life, and death among themselves.
Sir, the position McLeod stood in to that great and admi
rable State, undoubtedly limited the rights, and embarrassed the
action of the General Government. But, because we could
not do all that we would, were we not to do the little that we
could '? Were we to do nothing 1 Whom have we offended '?
The State of New York 1 How 1 By desiring to secure to
this prisoner, to whose fate interests so large and so precious
were attached, a fair trial? Sir, I cannot believe it. New

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. 19
York was proceeding against him in the ordinary course of
the administration of criminal law. To recognize her juris
diction over him, which in the amplest manner this govern
ment did, and then to wish for him just what New York
wished for him, that first of social privileges, a fair trial ; was
there in this anything to affront her pride of character ? Any
thing to ruffle a feather in the plume of her acknowledged
prerogative ?
But we sought to operate on the government of that State
by communicating our opinion on the points of international
law, and in effect advising it what course to pursue. Well,
Sir, does the conveyance of advice imply disrespect towards
the object of it, or a distrust of his integrity or his capacity ?
Does it prove anything more than that you feel a doep solici
tude that, in a great crisis of his fortunes and yours, he shall,
for his sake and yours, make no mistake ? Sir, here was a
State with the physical power of engaging you in a national
war. If hostilities followed the execution of McLeod, it
would not have been a war on New York alone, but on Louisi
ana, on South Carolina, on Maryland, on Massachusetts. If
they should be raore imraediately aimed at her, your valor and
your treasure must have united with hers for her defence. A
State, then, might plunge you in a general war; and yet, under
the Constitution, no State has the legal and direct right to
make a war for you or for herself. She has no right to ter
minate it by treaty, after it has begun. That great prerogative
is yours alone. Those transcendent imperial powers, by which^
and through which we are known to the nations,, are your
powers. And now, is it possible that a State, prohibited by
the Constitution from making war, from making treaties, may
consummate an act for which we must answer with our best
blood, on the field and on the deck ; and yet that this govern
ment, clothed by the Constitution with all these great trusts,
charged with the conservation of peace, with the conduct, ex
penditures, and hazards of war, — this government, whose flag
alone it is that waves over the universal American farnily,
wheresoever a member of it wanders, on land or sea — that
we cannot respectfully approach any State with the coramuni
cations of advisory suggestion, and deliberate with her on a
subject of great novelty, difficulty, and importance ? I have no

20 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
great opinion of such transcendentalism of delicacy as this —
good for winning electoral votes, possibly, but unfitting a man,
or a government, for manly and useful action. Sir, New
York is ably represented here, by gentlemen of both political
parties, and they can answer for her ; but I believe she will
laugh to scorn the suggestions we hear of out of doors, that
any disrespect has been shown or felt for her government or
her people, for her judicial learning, or for the temper, feel
ings, and views of any portion of her widespread community.
In judging on this part of the subject, in this inquiry how
far this government has exceeded its powers, invaded State
rights, or betrayed indecorous anxiety and haste to save this
person from the gallows, I ask you to take one thing into
your consideration. Sir, it is no answer at all to England to
say, this is the affair of New York. She knows nothing even
of that magnificent Empire State as a separate State. We do
not allow her to know anything of any State, by our Federal
Constitution, in that capacity. We do not allow her to have
diplomatic access to any. To attempt to make a treaty with
any, would be clear ground of war. We inform her that,
by our federal Constitution, the foreign relations of New York
are reposited here ; and if she has any cause of complaint
against her, she will please to leave her card at our door. Eng
land, of course, all the nations, must hold us to this ; and if
any State affords her ground of war, it is against us that we
ourselves direct her to turn her steel. At the same time there
fore, that our federal relations to New York hindered us from
doing much, our obligation on the laws of nations to England
to do everything was not in the least degree lessened by them.
The clear course of the government, therefore, was to do
what it did, — to apprise that patriotic and noble State of our
opinions on the justice of the demand of England ; to do what
we decorously could to avert so senseless and fatal an act as
the execution of the prisoner; to have his case fairly tried,
and, if needful, to have his case brought into the national tri
bunals ; to explain to England why we could go no farther
and then abide the result. Anything, everything were better
than a war on such a ground, that no man could hear of a
defeat or a victory without tears of bitterest humiliation for
America.

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. gl
Mr. President, I have one duty here to perform, not so
much to the Secretary of State as to my own feelings ; and
then I shall have done. I have said that it was the business
of the government, after, as far as was practicable, clearing
itself of fault in the matter of McLeod, to deraand satisfaction,
withholden and slept upon by England under the last Admin
istration for three years, for the destruction of The Caroline.
Gentlemen will do the Secretary of State the justice to re
member that far the larger part of the letter to Mr. Fox is
devoted to the performance of what he must have felt, as we
feel it to be, his most agreeable duty. They will concede, too,
that this part of his work is eminently well done. I should
but degrade the seat which I hold in this high place by public
adulation of any man, even of him. That he is my strong
and constant friend would be no apology at all. Yet I will
say that the ability and spirit with which this paper is written
will give it a high place among the ablest diplomatic composi
tions, which enrich the archives of even the Department of
State. He has vindicated the government of his country
under all administrations, making no narrow, unnational dis
criminations between them, from every shadow of blame in
reference to the Canadian border troubles ; has proved that,
so far from permitting or conniving at any participation in
them by our people, we have set an exaraple to the world ; we
have been the first nation in the world to prohibit our citizens
from making any form of war on a country with whose
government our own government was at peace ; has proved
that England had no right to make so rash and fatal an inva
sion on this. Sir, with this letter unrecalled, I think no
English minister will tell us again, at the end of three more
years, that he understood our claim for satisfaction had been
withdrawn. That this argument is ably conducted you all admit. But
the course of the distinguished Senator's observations makes
it more iramediately due to Mr. Webster, to reraind you that
the arguraent is so conducted as not only to inforra the public
judgment about this wrong, but to excite just sensibilities in
relation to it. It is so conducted as not only to enlighten the
understanding, but to lift up the spirit of the country. He
has not stooped to pick up and bluster about what is called the

22 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
language of threat, but he has met the whole claim and the
whole case of England with a composed and firm dignity, and
with a manly decision ; in the teraper of a statesman, he holds
the peace and glory of his country in his hands.
The Senator frora Virginia [Mr. Rives] last evening read
to us a portion of this paper. Let me enable its distinguished
author, now no more among you, again, though absent from
this scene of his long and splendid series of patriotic service,
to speak for himself.
" Under these circumstances, and under those immediately
connected with the transaction itself, it will be for her Majesty's
government to show upon what state of facts, and what rules
of national law, the destruction of The Caroline is to be de
fended. It will be for that government to show a necessity
of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of
means and no moment for deliberation. It will be for it to
show, also, that the local authorities of Canada, even supposing
the necessity of the raoment authorized them to enter the terri
tories of the United States at all, did nothing unreasonable or
excessive ; since the act, justified by the necessity of self-
defence, must be liraited by that necessity, and keep clearly
within it,
" It must be shown that admonition or remonstrance to the
persons on board The Caroline, was impracticable, or would
have been unavailing ; it must be shown that daylight could
not be waited for, that there could be no attempt at discrimi
nation between the innocent and the guilty ; that it would not
have been enough to seize and detain the vessel ; but that there
was a necessity, present and inevitable, for attacking her in the
darkness of the night, while moored to the shore, and while
unarmed raen were asleep on board, killing some and wounding
others, and then drawing her into the current, above the cata
ract, setting her on fire, and, careless to know whether there
might not be in her the innocent with the guilty, or the living
with the dead, comraitting her to a fate which fills the imagi
nation with terror. A necessity for all this, the government
of the United States cannot believe to have existed,"
To these hands, for one, I am willing to intrust the rights
and the fame of my country,
Mr. President, I concur entirely with both the Senators

THE CASE OF ALEXANDER McLEOD. gg
who have preceded me that there need be felt no apprehension
of a war with England. Like them, I neither expect nor
desire it. Heaven forbid! I know of nothing between the
governments that ought not to be and may not be easily and
honorably composed. But whatever may befall, I claim it
as the praise of this administration, that it has had the man
liness to seek peace by justice ; and that if war shall corae, it
has done all that man can do to enable us so to go into it that
we may have the approval of our own consciences, self-respect,
the moral judgments of the world, and may I not add, the
God of our fathers with us in the conflict.

SPEECH ON THE BILL TO PROVIDE FURTHER REME
DIAL JUSTICE IN THE COURTS OF THE UNITED
STATES, BY AN EXTENSION OF THEIR POWERS.^
DELITEEBD IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MAY 10, 1842.

1 CONCUR with the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Bucha
nan] in regarding this as an important bill. All legislation is
so which involves a question of the Constitution ; but this,
which, no doubt approaches, although it does not touch, the
impassable line that separates State and national jurisdiction,
and which has for its object to secure the national peace and
honor, by retaining the conduct of our foreign intercourse in
the nation's hands, possesses a peculiar importance. It was
for this reason that I expressed a desire last evening to tres
pass for a short time on your indulgence.
I have nothing to say to any part of the bill except that
which gives qualified jurisdiction to the national courts in cases
arising upon the laws of nations, and affecting the subjects of
foreign governments domiciled abroad. All the rest of the
bill, in so far as any constitutional principle is involved, is as
old as the judiciary act ; as old as the Constitution. Always
we have exercised a superintending appellate control over the
criminal jurisdiction of the States, after judgment, in cases
airising under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the
United States. Always we have asserted the great conserva
tive principle, that the determinations of the national courts in
these cases are the supreme law ; and that those courts are
our tribunals of the last resort. This great principle we have
1 The object of this bill was to meet any of the States and the United States.
such cases as that of McLeod ; and to It passed, with some amendments July
prevent a conflict of authority iDetween 7, 1842.

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. ^5
held fast in the worst of times, and at all times ; under all
administrations ; whatever party was uppermost ; with the
approbation of the people, of the States, and, I was happy
yesterday to hear, of the Senator from Pennsylvania. Permit
me to say. Sir, that when we shall be driven or seduced to let
go our hold on this, we are lost indeed. The only novelty in
this part of the bill is a change of the stage of the cause, in
which the controlling interposition of the national courts is to
be put forth ; but, in point of jurisdictional principle, there is
nothing new, and nothing to be defended. To much the
larger part of the Senator's speech, therefore, I attempt no
reply. Addressing myself, then, to that provision of the bill which
gives to the national tribunals qualified jurisdiction of crirainal
causes, commenced in State courts and under State authority,
against foreigners, the subjects of a foreign government, and
domiciled abroad, who defend themselves upon the laws of
nations, I submit that you have the constitutional power to
pass it, and that it is in a high degree expedient to do so.
You have the constitutional power. The cases to which
this provision applies are either, in the language of the second
section of the third article of the Constitution, " cases arising
under the Constitution and the laws of the United States ; "
or they are " controversies between a State and foreign citi
zens or subjects ; " or they are both ; and either way, to the
extent contemplated by the bill, you may commit them to the
national judiciary.
I say to the extent contemplated by the bill ; and that is a
very limited extent. The national tribunals interpose so far
only as to determine whether the laws of nations entitle the
prisoner to his discharge. If they do, he is discharged ; if
not, whatever the evidence or the deficiency of evidence against
him, he is remanded to the court of the State for general trial.
The jurisdiction given by this provision of the bill, therefore,
is of a single point, the relevancy and the sufficiency of the
laws of nations to rescue the party and the act from the opera
tion of the mere mCinicipal and local law.
Before advancing to the inquiry, by what precise clause and
denomination this jurisdiction is communicated, permit me to
premise a preliminary and preparatory suggestion ; and that
VOL. II. 3

26 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
is, that one of the grand objects, which we certainly know that
the framers of the Constitution had in view in the construction
of the judicial department, as well as throughout the whole of
their vast work, was such, and some of the acknowledged
powers of the national judiciary are such, as to afford a moral
certainty, a priori, that this particular and limited jurisdiction
over prosecutions begun in the State courts against foreigners
domiciled and owing allegiance abroad, and pleading the laws
of nations in their defence, must, under some clause, and by
some denomination or other, be found to be also given. The
Constitution gives so much jurisdiction, and on such policy, to
the national courts, that it must have given this too. It goes
so far, on such reason, that it must, as a systematic organiza
tion of government, resting upon any principle at all, be found
to go the whole length of this bill. Why, Sir, advert to this
single consideration : If the State of New York, or any other
State, or any citizen of any State, has the most frivolous civil
lawsuit with a subject of England resident in Canada, the Con
stitution gives the trial of it to the federal courts. If the
owner of The Caroline, for example, should bring his action of
trover against the persons who carried off' and burned her ; or
if the State itself, happening to be the proprietor of the wharf
"where she lay, should sue them in trespass quare clausum
fregit, for breaking and entering its close, and subverting the
soil, by the Constitution the case may be brought into your
tribunals. These suits, out of all manner of doubt, and by
the admission of everybody, are "controversies between a
State, or its citizens, and foreign citizens or subjects ; " to
which we know the national judicial power, by the express"
terms of the Constitution, is extended.
And now, sir, do you think that, when we come more criti
cally to analyze the article by which the judicial department is
constructed, we shall find that the Constitution has done so
capricious, inconsistent, not to say incomprehensible and ab
surd a thing, as to have given, with so much solicitude, to
your courts, jurisdiction over such disputes as these, and yet
to have overlooked altogether the weightier matters of this
bill \ Why, what is the policy on which you have, and may
assert, jurisdiction of these small civil suits against aliens'?
Confessedly and notoriously this only : to preserve, undis-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE.

27

turbed, harmonious intercourse with the rest of the world.
Presuming, not that the State courts, or the State judges, are
cannibals, as the Senator from Pennsylvania arraigns this bill
for presuming them to be — not so — but presuraing, whether
right or wrong I do not say, that they, by possibility, may be
somewhat less certain to be impartial in a case where their
own States, or their own neighbors, are parties on one side,
and a desolate stranger on the other ; presuming that they
may be more exposed, somewhat, to be disturbed and darkened
by sympathy with local passion and excitation, with the pride,
and anger, and short-lived and circumscribed emotions that
convulse a State, without sending a pulsation beyond its bor
ders, as a smaller water may be moved through all its depths
and extent by a breeze which the main sea will not feel ; pre
suming that they may be, by possibility, less profoundly im
pressed with the responsibilities attendant upon bringing on,
by a judicial decision, a war which their State would not have
to sustain, and which the nation would ; proceeding upon the
obvious principle of common sense and common justice, that
the government which must answer, by its treasure and its
blood, for a verdict or a judgraent, ought to have the right to
give the verdict and render the judgment — upon this policy
and on these reasons it was that the Constitution has with
drawn, has enabled Congress to withdraw, from the State
courts and give to yours the ultimate determination of this
kind of case against this kind of party. Although no foreign
government has anything to do with the matter, nor any
domestic government. State or natioual, has anything to do
with it ; although the decision may depend wholly upon the
local law of the State, and involve no iraraediate consequence
beyond the payment of an inconsiderable execution, yet, for
the sake of preserving the public peace, and because the denial
of civil justice to a subject of a foreign nation may possibly
bring on collision with that nation, with a wise and decisive
forecast, it has given this unquestionable expansion to your
judicial power. And now, I repeat it, can the Constitution,
after all this, have done so fitful, capricious, timid, and incon
sistent a thing as to leave a question on the life of a man — the
life of a soldier, coming into your territory by the comraand,
and to do the will of his sovereign ; in a case where a foreign

28 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
government is the real actor on one side, and your own
national government the recipient of wrong on the other — a
case vvhich is to be decided, not by the smaller reason of local
law, but by the code which governs the nations, and where
the inevitable consequences of conviction and execution will
be, not the payment of a trifling sum of money, but a war,
which may encircle and shake the globe — to leave such a
question as this, exclusively or concurrently, to those very
tribunals which it authorizes you to prevent from rendering
a judgment against a foreigner on a fifty-dollar promissory
note \ Is this great device of wisdom and policy, the Con
stitution, so little systematic and consistent ; so untrue to
itself; such a jumble of incongruities, and of the discordant
seminal principles of ill-assorted things as this comes to \
I say then. Sir, that the Constitution has gone so far in its
grant of federal jurisdiction, and upon such policy, that there
is a sound, not to say an irresistible presumption, a priori,
that we shall find, in some clause, a grant of the jurisdic
tion asserted by this bill.
I attach, Mr. President, so much importance to this pre
liminary consideration that one great object in the view of the
framers of the Constitution, in the organization of the judicial
department as well as of the entire scheme of national govern
ment, and in the conception of the Union itself, was to clothe
this government with the means of preserving national peace,
by holding in its hands the deterraination of all judicial ques
tions affecting its foreign relations as a government to other
governments ; it affords such a valuable general principle by
which to interpret the particular clauses of the instruraent, and
answers in advance so much of the argument of the Senator
from Pennsylvania, that, before proceeding to an inspection of
these clauses, I beg to dwell a little longer on it. Go back to
the birth-time of the Constitution, and ask its authors what
they expected of its judicial department. The Senator from
Pennsylvania inquires if our fathers dreamed of such a grant
of federal jurisdiction as this? Sir, what they dreamed of I
know not ; that was not a race or an age of dreaming men ;
but of heroical sentiments ; far, large, and practical aims ;
profound tlioughts, and great deeds ; and what they thought,
and what they did, we do know, and may usefully meditate.

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. QQ
Let me read first a passage from " The Federalist ; " the same
which was read, I believe, by the Senator from Georgia [Mr.
Berrien] in his able opening exposition and defence of the
bill ; but it will bear repetition :
" It seems scarcely to admit of controversy, that the judiciary authority
of the Union ought to extend to these several descriptions of cases : " —
" 4th. To all those which involve the peace of the confederaot,
whether they relate to the intercourse between the United States and for
eign nations, or to that between the States themselves ; Sth. To all those
which originate on the high seas, and are of admiralty or maritime juris
diction ; and, lastly, to all those in which the State tribunals cannot be
supposed to be impartial and unbiassed." " The fourth point rests on
this plain proposition, that the peace of the whole ought not to be left
at the disposal of a part. The Union will undoubtedly be answerable
to foreign Powers for the conduct of its members ; and the responsibility
for an injury ought ever to be accompanied vrith the faculty of prevent
ing it. As the denial or perversion of justice by the sentences of courts
is with reason classed among the just causes of war, it will follow that
the federal judiciary ought to have cognizance of all causes in which the
citizens of other countries are concerned. This is not the less essential
to the preservation of the public faith than to the security of the public
tranquillity. A distinction may perhaps be imagined, between cases aris
ing upon treaties and the laws of nations, and those which may stand
merely on the footing of the municipal law. The former kind may be
supposed proper for the federal jurisdiction ; the latter for that of the
States. But it is at least problematical, whether an unjust sentence
against a foreigner, when the subject of controversy was wholly relative
to the lex hei, would not, if unredressed, be an aggression upon his sov
ereign, as well as one which violated the stipulations of a treaty, or the
general law of nations. And a still greater objection to the distinction
would result from the immense difficulty, if not impossibility, of a practi
cal discrimination between the cases of one complexion and those of the
other. So great a proportion of the controversies in which foreigners
are parties involves national questions, that it is by far most safe and
most expedient to refer all those in which they are concerned to the
national tribunals." — Federalist, No. 80.
I have not been deterred from presenting this evidence of
the objects for which the judicial department was constructed,
by the imputation of centralism, or consolidationism, or federal
ism, so liberally heaped upon this bill, and its policy and its
aims, by the Senator from Pennsylvania. Upon the value of
this great contemporaneous commentary, as evidence of the
contents of the Constitution, I have not supposed there were
two opinions. In the history of controversy, in the history of
political literature, and of all literature, I know of no writing
3*

30 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
whatever which was given to the world under circumstances
affording so high a degree of security that it truly exposed the
contents of another writing, as the circumstances, under which
"The Federalist" appeared, afford that it truly exposes the con
tents of the Constitution. Two of its writers, and these the
writers of this number, and of alraost all of the entire work,
were members of the convention. All three possessed extraor
dinary ability and uprightness ; they would not misstate, and
could not misunderstand, the Constitution ; and they knew
that they addressed a community whose utmost intelligence
was at the moment all concentrated, with an intensity of inter
est which we can scarcely conceive, upon the study of its
meaning. Especially were they under no temptation to over
state the powers of the new government. They wrote to
urge its adoption upon an anxious and distrustful people, who
desired union, to be sure, and commerce, and manufactures,
and all social prosperity, but whose passion was liberty ; and
whose more habitual and more ardent affections were tow
ards the States. They wrote to allay fears of its extent ;
to diminish the sense of the change it wrought ; to bring
down the exaggerated features, which timidity or design had
sketched, to the dimensions of actual existence. The only
temptation they in fact were exposed to was to understate its
powers, and especially the judicial power, of which the old
confederation had possessed next to none. Where, then, as a
general reraark, the writers of "The Federalist" admit a power
or a principle in the Constitution, you may be sure it is there.
Let me fortify the opinion I have thus given by the authori
tative words of our great judicial expounder of the Constitu
tion : —
" The opinion of ' The Federalist' has always been considered as of great
authority. It is a complete commentary on our Constitution, and is ap
pealed to by all parties, in the questions to which that instrument has
given birth. Its intrinsic merit entitles it to this high rank ; and the part
two of its authors performed in framing the Constitution put it very much
in their power to explain the views with which it was framed. These
essays, having been published while the Constitution was before the na
tion for adoption or rejection, and having been written in answer to ob
jections, founded entirely on the extent of its powers, and on its diminu
tion of State sovereignty, are entitled to the more consideration where
they frankly avow that the power objected to is given, and defend it." 
Chief Justice MarshaU, in Cohen v. Virginia, 6 Wheaton 413.

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. gl
Hear the avowal of Mr. Madison upon this subject, in the
Virginia convention, during the discussion on the adoption of
the Constitution, in the face of an opposition "before which
the eyes of eagles would have blenched :" —
"The general policy of that clause (the 1st and 2d sections of the 3d
article on the judicial power) is to prevent all occasions of having dis
putes with foreign powers, to prevent disputes between different States,
and remedy partial decisions. I believe this to be wise and salutary." —
2 Elliot's Debates, 389.
And General Randolph, in the same convention (p. 4il8),
said, speaking of the national judiciary : —
" Its next object is to perpetuate harmony between us and foreign
Powers. The general government, having the superintendency of the
general safety, ought to be the judges how the United States can be most
effectually secured and guarded against controversies with foreign nations.
I presume, therefore, that treaties, and cases affecting ambassadors, other
public ministers, and consuls, and all those concerning foreigners, will not
be considered as improper subjects for a federal judiciary. Harmony
between the States is no less necessary than harmony between foreign
States and the United States. Disputes between them ought, therefore,
to be decided by the federal judiciary."
Let me ask you to go a little farther back, and trace the
history of the construction of the judicial department in the
convention which framed the Constitution. See there how
solicitously, and to what extent, the grand function of preserv
ing the national peace was meant to be bestowed on it, and
consider what rule of construction of its particular clauses this
fact suggests. The Virginia plan of a Constitution was intro
duced, as Senators remember, by Mr. Randolph, on the twenty-
ninth of May, in fifteen resolutions. How this proposed to
frame the judicial power, I will remind you in a moment. It
was held under discussion until the fifteenth of June, when the
Jersey plan, as it was called, was introduced by Mr. Patterson,
in eleven resolutions. This was the plan of the State-rights
party in the convention ; of those who advocated the closest
practicable adherence to the articles of confederation ; the po
litical ancestry of the State-rights sect of this day. And how
did this construct the judicial department of the amended but
still inadequate system of federal government which it de
signed 1 Mark the terms of the last branch of the fifth reso
lution : —

32 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
" Resolved, That the judiciary so established shall have authority to
hear and determine, in the first instance, on all impeachments of federal
oficers, and, by way of appeal, in the dernier resort, in all cases touching
the rights of ambassadors ; of all cases of captures from an enemy ; in all
cases of piracies and felonies on the high seas ; in all cases in which for
eigners may be interested." — 2 Madison Papers, 865-6.
These resolutions having been rejected, for the general rea
son that they did not frarae a sufficiently strong and a suffi
ciently national government, the convention resumed the ex
amination of the Virginia plan ; and, on the twenty-sixth of
July, the grand general principle, on which the judicial power
was to be erected, was finally adopted. Observe the comprehen
sive and energetic terms of that well-considered principle : —
" Resolved, That the jurisdiction of the national judiciary shall extend
to cases arising under laws passed by the general legislature, and to
such other questions as involve the national honor and harmony." — 2 Madi
son Papers, 1284.
It was on that day referred, together with other resolutions,
which had also been adopted as the basis, in part, of the new
Constitution, to a " committee of detail," for the purpose of
being expanded and carried out into the necessary particular
enumeration, and cast into technical expression ; and that
committee, on the sixth of August, reported this second section
of the article of judicial power, substantially in the form in
which it stands in the Constitution.
Pause now, for a moraent, on these facts, and see if they do
not prove, a priori, that the jurisdiction given by this bill must
be found to be authorized by some part of the Constitution.
You observe that all opinions in the convention concurred in
the general principle, that the judicial department ought to be
so constructed as to secure harmony of intercourse with the
nations of the world. So much is certain ; and how was this
to be done ? Precisely by intrusting all cases affecting that
intercourse to the national tribunals. The State-rights party,
as you have seen, would have committed to those tribunals
"all cases affecting foreigners," in so many words; all cases 
criminal, of course, as well as civil. Rejecting the plau of
that party, for its incompleteness and inadequacy, do you be
lieve that the majority of the convention meant to give to their
own judiciary a narrower and feebler jurisdiction 1 Did they

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 33
mean to do less than even their anti-national opponents were
willing to do "? The principle which they adopted, as I have
shown, was, that it should have cognizance of " all questions
involving national peace and harmony." Now, when you ad
vance to the construction of the detailed enumeration of the
particular cases of jurisdiction into which this principle is ex
panded, and in which it is embodied in the Constitution, must
you not so interpret that enumeration, if the letter of the lan
guage will allow you to do so, as to completely satisfy and ex
haust the general principle itself ^ Must you not, are you not
bound to so interpret it, to the limit of the letter, as to embrace
all judicial cases and questions involving national peace and
harmony ? Did not the comraittee of detail frame this enu
meration, did not the convention receive and adopt it, expressly
and exactly, as embodying, expanding, and executing the whole
of the great principle which had been resolved upon ? Did not
everybody understand that, under one or another, or all, of the
cases and controversies enumerated, were coraprehended all
questions whatever of a judicial nature, affecting the national
peace ? Why, look again at the facts. The general principle
was adopted, and sent to the committee of detail on the twenty-
sixth of July, as I have said. The business of that committee
was, not to narrow, enlarge, or change the principle, but to
express it, perfectly and technically. The convention never af
terwards narrowed or changed their own principle. They ad
journed on that sarae day to await the report of the committee ;
and they accepted that report on the sixth of August, as their
own principle, given back to them, in form and substance, nei
ther less nor larger, nor other than when they committed it,
except that it was drawn out into the requisite particularity of
detail. Are we not bound, then, if the language will admit it
— are we not bound to put such construction on these clauses
granting judicial power as to give full effect to what we know
was the meaning of the convention'? Do you not defraud
what you know was the principle intended to be embodied
here, if you adopt an interpretation which will withdraw a
large class of questions, or any questions, involving national
peace and harmony^ from the national judiciary ? To your
honor, to your integrity, I appeal, not less than to your intel
ligence, completely and in good faith, to execute the Constitu-

34. SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tion, which is the record of the people's will, when you cannot
fail to see you have discovered its meaning.
If, then. Sir, the cases comprehended in this bill — cases
of State prosecutions against subjects of foreign governments
domiciled abroad — for acts done in the foreign character,
under an order of the foreign government, and within the
immunity of the laws of nations ^- if such cases as McLeod's,
for example, do constitute a question involving the national
peace and harmony, you are prepared to find them, by a dil
igent and a conscientious interpretation, under some clause or
other of the article creating the judicial power, committed to
the national judiciary. We must find them there, or the Con
stitution is untrue to its own ascertained principles, and incon
sistent with its own expressed provisions.
Well, do not such cases directly involve the national peace 1
That of McLeod, for instance, did it not ] Why, Sir, the
Constitution deems that the execution of a five hundred dol
lar judgment against the foreign acceptor of a bill of ex
change may involve the national peace ; and therefore it sends
the trial to the national courts. In your consciences, do you
not think that the same Constitution deems the sentence of
death and the infliction of death on a foreign soldier, for obey
ing the order of his sovereign, and who pleads that order, —
the responsibility of his government and the benignity and
manliness of the laws of nations for his life, — to be at least
equally likely to involve national peace ]
I have thus far, Mr. President, attempted no more than to
raise a presumption, — a priori, — that under some clause or
other of the article establishing the judicial power, this juris
diction over State prosecutions of foreigners resident abroad,
and depending on the laws of nations, will be found to be
coraraunicated. Let me now approach the question, under
which clause it is comraunicated. The whole grant reads
thus : —
" The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, aris
ing under tbis Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties
made, or which shall be made, under their authority ; to all cases affect
ing ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls ; to all cases of ad
miralty and maritime jurisdiction ; to controversies to which the United
States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States
between a State and citizens of another State, between citizens of dif-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. Q^
ferent States, between citizens of the same State clairaing lands under
grants of different States, and between a State, or the citizens thereof,
and foreign States, citizens, or subjects." — Constitution, art. 3, sect. 2,
cl. 1.
It would seem a pretty fair deduction from the grand gen
eral principle of policy on which I have been insisting, that
the designation " controversies between a State and foreign
States, citizens, or subjects," should include criminal accusa
tions by a State against a foreign subject, who pleads the laws
of nations and the orders of his government. Civil suits by
a State against aliens are triable in the national courts for the
preservation of the national peace. Why should not criminal
charges also between the same parties be so tried on the
same policy 1 And if so, — unless the preceding description
of " cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties
of the United States " embraces and provides for them, —
why do they not fall under the denomination of controversies ?
I concur, however, with the able and judicious chairman of
the judiciary committee, [Mr. Berrien,] in not placing the bill
upon that ground. I think, with him, it may be placed on
far other and far clearer ground. Indeed, it is framed avow
edly with reference to another principle of jurisdiction. At
the sarae time that I say this, I beg to add that I do not
mean to concede that the cases which are erabraced in it are
not controversies between a State and a foreign State or sub
ject, within the very letter and the acknowledged spirit of this
grant. Upon this point I neither affirm nor deny. I do not
concede that " controversies " do not include criminal cases ;
because I would do nothing to weaken or bring into question
any power of this government ; and because even the hasty
and inconsiderate concessions of debate may help, silently and
irrecoverably, to change the Constitution. Doubtful, on the
contrary, at least, it seems to me to be, whether criminal cases
are not controversies, and were not meant to be comprehended
in that term. Let me intiraate the grounds of this sugges
tion very briefly, without pausing to attempt to enforce them.
It is settled, and is admitted, that the term cases, in this part
of the Constitution, " all cases arising under the Constitution,
laws, and treaties of the United States," includes cases of a
criminal as well as civil nature ; but it is supposed that the

36 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
term " controversies " includes those of a civil nature only.
There is, I know, an obiter dictum to this effect, of Mr. Jus
tice Iredell, in the early and celebrated case of Chisholm v.
State of Georgia, (2 Dall. 419.) Mr. Tucker intimates the
same thing in a passage of his appendix to Blackstone's Com
mentaries, (1 Tucker's Black. Com. app. 420, 421 ;) and Mr.
Justice Story silently records these opinions in a note, (3
Story's Com. on Constitution, 536,) without any expression
of assent, however, to which his name would have lent an au
thority so comraanding. Besides this, I find nothing on that
side of the question.
Now, the word controversy, in its popular or its professional
use, does not, I think, apply exclusively to civil disputes. It
seems rather to have a wider and more flexible signification
than the word ease, which certainly includes criminal accusa
tions. Judicial controversies are disputes, disagreements, dif
ferences between parties, respecting their legal rights and
wrongs, wherein one controverts what the other alleges, and
which are put in a form for judicial determination. These
are judicial controversies. And does not an accusation of a
State against a foreign subject, for an act done within its bor
ders, which he asserts an authority to do under the laws of
nations and the coraraands of his sovereign, come exactly
within the terms of the definition ? Is it the less truly a
controversy because it relates to crime, or because one of the
parties is a State and the other a man, — both standing, how
ever, on the same plane of privilege in a court of law ? Let
me, without indecorum, remind you that the dictionaries — in
illustration of one of the meanings of the word — refer to
two verses in our translation of the Bible, — a book which,
more truly than Chaucer's poetry, may be called a " well of
English undefiled ; " and that in one of these it denotes a
legal prosecution for crirae, — the parties to which are the
righteous and the wicked, — and which terminates in punish
ment by stripes; while in the other, in a still more awful
sense, the Supreme Being is declared to have " a controversy
with the nations."
Certain it is, I think, that, if the Constitution had intended
by the term cases to include civil and criminal proceedings, and
by the term controversies civil proceedings only, it would have

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. QH
employed some qualifying and explanatory epithet or expres
sion to convey that limitation of the sense. There is no such
broad and recognized difference of signification between the
words, standing alone, as to warrant the belief that the Con
stitution, distinguished always for its perspicuous, simple, and
popular phraseology, could have expected or intended that they
would be understood in so fine, far-sought, and yet so momen
tous a diversity of signification. This would be more like and
more worthy the compilers of synonymes than the framers of a
fundamental law, to be read by a whole people. The judiciary
act, passed in 17^9, carefully says, " controversies of a civil
nature," where it means civil causes, acknowledging and feel
ing that the constitutional term controversies, standing alone,
included a great deal more.
The truth seems, in short, to be, that, in their ordinary and
their professional use, the words cases and controversies are
coextensive, but that we employ case when we refer to the
subject of the dispute, controversies when we refer to the par
ties. We speak of a painful controversy between a husband
and wife and their friends, on a libel for a divorce ; but we
speak of a new case on the statute of frauds, or on the doc
trine of presumption. And the Constitution adopts this gen
eral habit of our ordinary language in the clause which confers
jurisdiction. But the very next clause, which distributes juris
diction into original and appellate, is in these words : —
" 2. In aU cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and con
suls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall
have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases hefore mentioned, the
Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact,
with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the Congress shall
make." And here, you observe, the word eases is used to include all
which, in the preceding clause, had been denominated both
cases and controversies.
I propound it as a doubt, therefore, whether — when you
consider the ordinary import of the term itself; that it is used
here without limitation or qualification ; that the word cases,
(with which this word certainly does not, in general speech,
stand in any well-known contrast of sense,) in this sarae
clause, includes criminal and civil suits ; that the same reason
VOL. II. 4

38 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
of policy which assigns civil controversies to the national tri
bunals would, with far more urgency, assign to them criminal
controversies also ; — I suggest a doubt, upon these consider
ations, whether the term does not cover the whole ground of
this part of the bill. Certain it is, that, unless this description
of prosecutions are within the preceding clause, "cases arising
under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United
States," they must be holden to be controversies between a
State and foreigners, and thus, quacunque vid data, cognizable
in the national tribunal.
But, Mr. President, on this question, listen to a witness of
the age of the Constitution ; listen to the " genuine informa
tion delivered to the legislature of the State of Maryland,
relative to the proceedings of the general convention held at
Philadelphia in 1787? ^Y Luther Martin, Esq., Attorney-Gen
eral of Maryland, and one of the delegates in the said con
vention." Mr. Martin, just returned from the convention, of
which he had been an energetic member, in the presence of
one or more of his colleagues in that body, in the presence
of the house of delegates of Maryland, to which he was
making an elaborate report of the deliberations and proceed
ings which had resulted in the Constitution, and an elaborate
analysis of the Constitution itself, then and there employs this
language : —
" The inquiry concerning and trial of every offence against and breach
of the laws of congress are also confined to its courts. The same courts,
also, have the sole right to inquire concerning and try, every offence, from
the lowest to the highest, committed by the citizens of any other State, or of a
foreign nation, against the laws of this State, within its territory. And
in all these cases, the decision may be ultimately brought before the su
preme tribunal, since the appellate jurisdiction extends to criminal as
well as to civil cases." — Yates's Minutes of the Federal Convention of
1787. 4 Elliotts Debates, p. 46.
He, then, certainly believed that " controversies " embraced
criminal controversies. I know he opposed and dreaded the
Constitution. I even admire, although I wonder at and disap
prove, the soleran earnestness and energy of thought and ex
pression with which he cautions the delegates of Maryland to
dash to the earth the cup of poison which the convention
had commended to their lips. But he was then a man, as I
have always heard, of a most powerful and penetrating under-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 39
standing ; trained by all the learning and by the long exercise
of his profession, and of perfect integrity and honor. That
he rightly comprehended the objects and the provisions of the
judicial power would seem, in the highest degree, probable ;
that he would venture, the highest law-officer of Maryland, at
the head of his profession, fresh from the sittings of the con
vention, in presence of his colleagues, in presence of the leg
islature, to misstate these objects and provisions, I do not
believe. Certainly you cannot produce a particle of contem
poraneous testimony in opposition to this, to be compared a
moment with it for pertinence and for strength.
I understand Governor Randolph, speaking in the Virginia
convention, to express the same opinion in other language.
" I presume, therefore, that treaties and cases affecting ambassadors
ahd other public ministers, and consuls, and all those concerning foreigners,
will not be considered as improper subjects for a federal judiciary." —
2 Elliot's Debates, p. 418.
To this construction I know there are grave objections. I
feel and adrait their force. As I do not place my main reli
ance, nor much reliance, upon it in support of the bill, I shall
detain you upon them but a few moments.
It is said that the withdrawal from the States of the trial of
crimes is a more extensive and more formidable invasion of the
sovereignty of the States than the withdrawal of the trial of
civil suits, and that this suggests a reason for so restraining
the meaning of controversies as to exclude trials of crimes and
include trials of contracts.
I answer, first, that the general principle settled by the con
vention warrants no such discrimination in favor of State sov
ereignty, or for any other reason, between civil and criminal
litigation. That principle, you have seen, is, that your judicial
power shall extend to all questions involving national peace and
harmony. All questions; not part; not half; not those only
quce frequentius accidunt ; not those by the trial of which you
will least invade State sovereignty ; but all. The object of the
resolution adopting the principle was national harmony, not
State sovereignty. That State sovereignty was to be invaded
and restrained, was a thing determined on. It was just what
the convention were engaged in doing ; just what the people
were engaged in doing, through and by the convention. They

40 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
were reducing the sovereignty of the States to establish yours.
They were borrowing from these dispersed, lesser, and golden
urns, — or rather from the great primal source, the people, —
light and fire for a central sun. Have you, then, any insuperable
difficulty in supposing, when you find them adopting this prin
ciple of policy upon the subject of national jurisdiction, that, to
the whole extent of the principle, they meant to abridge the
original sovereignty of the States ? Show me that criminal
trials do not involve national peace, and you take them out of
its operation. But if you cannot do this, then, whether more
or less essential to State sovereignty, the principle transfers
them to this government.
Let me add. Sir, — although the argument of the honorable
chairman of the committee upon this subject left little more to
be desired, — that I know of nothing in reason, or in the Con
stitution, to warrant the imagination that you invade the sover
eignty of the States any more, when you take from them the
trial of criraes, than when you take from them the trial of
contracts. Gentlemen, with great serenity, allow the federal
jurisdiction over a suit by a citizen against an alien, on a five
hundred dollar bill of exchange payable here, depending wholly
on the law of the State ; but the trial for his life, of a foreign
soldier, wearing the uniform, receiving the pay, obeying the
command of his sovereign, and cloven down and captured in
his actual service; who claims the protection of the ancient
and universal law of the Christian world ; whose cause is his
country's cause; whose security his country guarantees ; whose
blood his country must avenge, or be a by-word and a hissing
among the nations — such, so grand, so solemn and so eventful
a State prosecution, they say you cannot try, even on the
single point contemplated by the bill, because it would be to
invade the sovereignty of the States. Pray, Sir, is it not just
as rauch invaded in one case as in the other? Is it not just
as much an act, or an attribute of sovereignty, as grand, as
beneficent, as beautiful, to sit in the great halls of national civU
justice, with eyes averted, the golden scales suspended aloft,
and administer that justice "freely and without price, com
pletely and without any denial, promptly and without delay,
conformably to the laws," as it is to punish crime 1 Is it only
vvhen a State is in, anger; is it only when she is avengino- a

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 41
wrong directly to herself, that she is a sovereign, and acting
as a sovereign ? By what tests, by what well-compounded in
strumentality do you undertake thus to distinguish between one
ray, or one beam and another of all those which blend and
blaze in the wide rainbow arch of sovereign power 1
The Senator from Georgia, however, suggested what I
deem a much more formidable objection to this interpretation
of the word controversies, and that is the startling extent of
the consequences which would flow from it. It raight follow,
in the strong language of Luther Martin, which I have just
read to you, " that the national courts have the sole right to
inquire concerning, and try, every offence, from the lowest to
the highest, committed by the citizens of any other State, or
of a foreign nation, against the laws of this State within its
territory." I recognize the force of the objection. But is it certain that
the Constitution did not, however, mean to commit even this
power to a sound legislative discretion % The Constitution,
designed to create a national commonwealth which should be
immortal, and looking forward to those possible varieties of
untried national being through which it might pass, to enable
you to preserve peace with foreign governments, and peace
among yourselves, bestows upon you perhaps the power to
clothe your courts with even this expansion of jurisdiction.
But it does not command you to exert it at once, or to exert it
at all. It intrusts it to your discretion. Observe the change
of language in these successive clauses of this article. " The
judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the Con
stitution, laws, or treaties of the United States ; " but it shall
extend " to controversies between the enumerated parties ; "
not sapng all, significantly, perhaps, dropping that word ; thus
leaving you the power to extend it to all, or to part, and to
draw your line of jurisdiction where and how you please. I
adopt this conjecture from the opinion of Mr. Justice Story in
the case of Martin v. Hunter's lessee, (Wheat. 385-6.)
In the exercise of this discretion accordingly, the judiciary
act gives jurisdiction to the national tribunals of such civil
suits only against aliens as ascend to a certain degree of im
portance. Is there any more difficulty in the exercise of the
same discretion, in extending the jurisdiction of the same tri-
4*

4g SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
bunals over criminal prosecutions by the States to the cases,
and for the purpose, contemplated by this bill "? Is there any
difficulty in cases where a foreigner, accused of crime, admits
or postpones the denial of the facts, and interposes a special
claim of immunity, founded on the law of nations, in permit
ting the national courts to pronounce solely upon that single
preliminary or collateral claim of immunity? The general
case they scarcely may be said to try at all. They do not
assume to interpret and administer the criminal, municipal law
of a State. They only inquire and decide, whether that law
is not, under the particular circumstances, superseded, dis
placed, overridden, by the universal code of civilization. To
the extent of that inquiry and that decision, the case becoraes
a controversy on a collateral, or rather a special, matter ; and,
to that extent, the jurisdiction of the national tribunals might
seem to be safe, salutary, and within this clause of the Consti
tution. So far only, be it observed, does the bill assume to go.
It has been suggested, as another objection to this interpre
tation of the word controversies, that it would give to the
general government, to some extent, the administration of the
criminal jurisprudence of the States ; that this involves a sole
cism, and a dangerous solecism, too; that the government
which tries must necessarily have the power to pardon ; and,
of course, the President would become armed with the power
of taking from the States their means of punishing crimes
against their own laws. Confusion and collision, it is argued,
must inevitably be the consequence.
I agree, undoubtedly. Sir, that this consideration is of weight
to induce a sparing, and unfrequent and qualified exercise of
this jurisdiction, ratione personarum. Limited, however, to a
mere inquiry how far the laws of nations withdraw the for
eigner, in the particular case, from the condition of general
liability to the local criminal code, I see nothing so very formi
dable in the jurisdiction. Certainly, it carries to the national
executive no power to pardon. This is a jurisdiction, so far
as this clause is concerned, founded on the character of the
parties, not on the nature of the cause. It is a jurisdiction
given by the Constitution to the judiciary only. It is a juris
diction to that department to try, to acquit, or convict and sen
tence, according to a prescribed law.

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 4,3
The power of pardon is a strict executive power ; is totally
unaffected by this grant of judicial power, and remains unim
paired, uncontrolled, in the executive of the State. The juris
diction which is founded on the nature of the cause, rests, I
need not say, on different principles altogether ; and to cases
within those principles the national executive may hold a very
different relation.
But I am glad to arrive, at last, at the true ground on
which your constitutional competence to pass this bill is to be
asserted. The cases embraced in it are, all of them, cases
"arising under the Constitution and laws of the United
States," and therefore expressly within the national judicial
power. They are such, for the general reason that they in
volve, accomplish, and depend on the interpretation and admin
istration of certain constitutional powers and duties, and cer
tain laws of this government.
The bill before you is, in form, a bill to give jurisdiction, in
a certain raode, of a certain description of cases, to the na
tional courts. Like every other bill, however, which assumes
to give jurisdiction, it assumes to do, and it does, another
thing also. It does two things : It first adopts, or makes a
law to be administered, and then it designates a tribunal to
adrainister it ; it first makes a law, and then it makes a court ;
it fi*st adopts the law of nations as the law to be administered,
and then commits the administration of that law to the national
judiciary. I think. Sir, it will facilitate the investigation' in which we
are engaged, to separate these two objects of the bill, and to
take them up one at a time. Let us look at it then, first, as a
bill making law, and then as a bill conferring jurisdiction.
In the first place, then, as a law-making bill. What does
it do ; and is it, in that view of it, constitutional \
Well, then. Sir, the bill, in this aspect, does, by inevitable
implication, exactly this : It declares, in effect, and by inevitable
implication, that, whereas, in the intercourse of independent
commonwealths, there are cases in which the rights and liabil
ities of subjects of one government, domiciled abroad, for acts
done within the territory of another, depend, according to the
laws of nations, upon the laws of nations, administered by the
injured government, and overriding and displacing the mere

44. SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
municipal and local code ; that, therefore, in such cases, the
laws of nations shall be applied, shall form the rule of deter^
mination, and shall relieve from restraint the alien imprisoned
in violation of them. This, I think, is exactly the effect of
the bill, as a bill making a law to be administered. If, by the
laws of nations, as understood and observed among indepen
dent. Christian, and civilized commonwealths, there are cases
where the liabilities of the citizens of one commonwealth, and
resident there, for acts done in the country of another, depend
on, and ought to be tried by, the laws of nations, then, in such
cases, judicially ascertained to exist, the laws of nations shall
be the code of trial ; and the courts of the injured common
wealth shall interpret and administer that code accordingly, to
the extent of affording relief from restraint. The bill recites
and enacts all this by implication. It does so by directing the
discharge of the party, if, by the law of nations, the courts
find him entitled to discharge. What the cases are in which
the law of nations thus interposes itself; what are the cases in
which it rescues the party from the mere municipal law, it
does not attempt to define. But where the judicial power de
clares the case to exist, according to the law of nations, that
law is to govern that case.
And now the question is, whether it is competent to con
gress thus to adopt and to provide for the adrainistration of
the law of nations, as part of the law of the United States, in
cases affecting the security of foreigners domiciled abroad, and
through them affecting our foreign relations and foreign inter
course ? I subrait, then. Sir, that this is clearly within your
constitutional competence.
I deduce your authority, first, from a general view of the
powers bestowed by the Constitution, and, secondly, from cer
tain particular provisions.
In the first place, congress is expressly authorized " to make
all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested
by this Constitution in the government of the United States,
or in any department or officer thereof." (Constitution, art!
1, sec. 8, clause 17-)
You may make, then, all laws necessary and proper for
executing all the powers vested in the general government,

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 45
and performing all the duties iraposed on it by the Constitu
tion. But the adoption and adrainistration of the laws of na
tions, to the extent of the cases in this bill, is a necessary and
proper means of executing certain of those powers, and per
forming certain of those duties, and, therefore, you may so
far adopt them and provide for their administration. Such, in
other words, in the same words rather, are your powers, — such
your duties under the Constitution, that the adoption and ad
ministration of the law of nations is proper, necessary, indis
pensable, to enable you to execute and perform them.
I say nothing, in aid of my argument, of the " comraon de
fence and general welfare." I do not attempt, and I did not
understand the Senator from Georgia to attempt, to deduce
any power at all from that language, so broad, but so vague,
and of such uncertain and disputed signification. But, finding
an express authority, carefully and clearly conveyed, to do
what is necessary and proper to be done for the purpose of
executing the Constitution, I hope that a sober and free in
quiry, whether the adoption and administration of part of the
laws of nations are a necessary means to that end, may not
very rapidly accelerate the fulfilment of the prophecy, which
the Senator from Pennsylvania has found in the Foreign
Quarterly Review, that our institutions, so instinct throughout
with fervid, passionate, and inextinguishable liberty, are soon
to merge in centralization and monarchy.
Let this proposition, then, be examined. It is adraitted by
everybody that the Constitution holds out the Union under the
general government, for all purposes of foreign intercourse,
for all foreign relations, as the nation. It makes, and it
proclaims it such. It bestows on it all the powers of foreign
public intercourse known to our system, — belligerent, pacific,
diplomatic, comraercial. It intrusts to its control and admin
istration all the modes by which one nation, as such, can com
municate with another nation, as such. A State cannot go to
war, nor make a peace, nor send nor receive ministers, nor
regulate the terms on which it will trade with a single spot on
the globe beyond its own borders. In all these respects, for
all these purposes, for everything beyond its own borders.
States are no more, no other, than individual, natural persons,
component atoms of the great unit mass. " If," says Mr.

46 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Madison, in the forty-second number of " The Federalist,''
" we are to be one nation in any respect, it clearly ought to
be in respect to other nations." And one nation we certainly
are, e pluribus unum, for some purposes.
" That the United States form, for many and for most important pur
poses, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war we are one
people ; in making peace we are one people ; in all commercial regu
lations we are one and the same people ; in raany other respects, the
American people are one ; and the government, which is alone capable
of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is
the government of the Union. It is their government, and, in that
character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many re
spects, and to many purposes, a nation ; and for all these purposes her
governraent is complete ; to all these objects it is competent. The peo
ple have declared that, in the exercise of all powers given for these ob
jects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately
control all individuals or governments within the American territory.
The constitution and laws of a State, so far as they are repugnant to the
Constitution and laws of the United States, are absolutely void. These
States are constituent parts of the United States. They are members of
one great empire — for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes sub
ordinate." — Opinion of Chief Justice MarshaU in Cohens v. Virginia.
In Holmes e). Jennison, 14 Peters, 570, Chief Justice Taney
says, —
" AU the powers which relate to our foreign intercourse are confided to
the general government. Everything that concerns our foreign rela
tions, and that may be used to preserve peace or to wage war, has been
committed to the hands of the federal government."
In holding you out as the nation, in making you the nation,
the Constitution makes you alone responsible to the complaint,
well or ill founded, of every other nation in the world. It
makes you responsible, and it raakes the States irresponsible.
It withdraws the States, and it withdraws the people from
view, and incloses and shelters them within one common and
wide sweep of city wall. It does not allow a State, as such,
so much as to be spoken to, in anger or in kindness, by a for
eign nation, as such. Not even a blow, not even a shot, can
reach a State. Whatever it is aimed at, by the theory of our
system, it strikes, alight where it will, your giant form alone.
The duty of avoiding war, by doing justice, or by displaying
spirit ; the whole vast cost of maintaining it when it comes ;
the duty and the cost of closing or of preventing it by negotia
tion ; all are devolved directly and solely on you. Your posi-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 417
tion wou^d not, in these particulars, be varied a jot that I can
see, if the States were melted down into a single people, and
their constitutions, their partial sovereignty, their lines of
boundary, and their very naraes, had perished, like the archi
tecture, the polity, and all the glories of a primitive and for
gotten civihzation. There is a sense, no doubt, in which it
may be the duty of. every citizen and every State to assist in
preserving the national peace, but all which the nation, as such,
can do to that end, is your business and your duty alone.
In thus erecting you into the nation, and setting you, not
the States, on the high places of responsibility, the Constitu
tion subjects you, subjects the Union, the general government,
to the general law of nations, in so far as that law applies to
your intercourse with and relation to the rest of the world. It
subjects you to it in a totally different sense from that in which
the States are subject to it. It places you in a position, it
clothes you with powers, it imposes on you duties, which make
it your peculiar, national, imperial, duty to the Constitution and
under the Constitution to observe and adrainister that law to
that extent. I regard the Constitution as declaring, by inevi
table implication, as intelligibly and as peremptorily as if it
were written in it, that the laws of nations, in so far as they
apply to and regulate intercourse with foreigners and foreign
governments, are, or raay be raade by the legislature, obliga
tory on and in the United States, exactly as they are on and
in the other Christian and civilized nations of the world.
The Constitution declares this in and by the raere act of
bringing you into the circle of independent, Christian, and civil
ized nations. It is the condition of such national existence to
be under that code. You cannot be a nation at all, and yet be
so great as to be exempted from the power, or so little as not
to feel the care, of that law " whose seat is the bosom of God,
whose voice is the harmony of the world." If I may vary the
fine and strong thought of Cicero, to escape from it, you must
fly from yourselves, and spurn even your own national nature.
You may cease to be a nation ; you may break the golden,
unseen band of the constellation in which we move along, and
shoot apart, separate, wandering stars, into the infinite abyss ;
you may throw down the radiant ensign, and descend from the
everlasting and glittering summits of your freedom and your

48 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
power ; but while you exist as now you do, the only nation of
our system known to the other nations, you are under, you
must obey, and you may claim upon, the common code of all
civilized and Christian commonwealths.
And not so only. Sir ; but the Constitution everywhere as
sumes and sends you to that law as your law. You may
make war, it tells you ; but the causes of war, the law of war,
the conduct of war, its iron rights, the rights and duties of
neutrality — where are you taught these things, where are you
prescribed these things, but by this venerable and universal
jurisprudence ? You may negotiate, and what is that but the
bringing up of national controversies to this standard and ex
ponent of the jura gentium ? You may make treaties, and where
do you find the learning of treaties '? You are to " establish
justice," and what is its measure but this % You may regulate
commerce ; but the grand, controlling, and elementary prin
ciples of the international intercourse, even of trade, are they
not to be found here, and here alone % You may define and
punish offences against the law of nations ; and is it not then
your law, — yours for interpretation, — yours for enforcement?
You are an independent nation ; and are not the principles of
national independence a leading title of international law ?
Accordingly, Mr. President, from the first national breath
.we drew, we have assumed that we were subject, to the extent
I have defined, to the laws of nations. Every minister we
have sent or received, every demand of justice we have made
or had made on us, every diplomatic act, every peace, every
war, innumerable executive and judicial and legislative deter
minations, have assuraed and recognized it. I do, indeed, un
derstand the Senator frora Pennsylvania himself, as conceding
the position as fully as I have urged it.
And now, Sir, the question is narrowed to this : since the
Constitution makes you a nation, the only nation for inter
course with the world known to our system ; since it makes
you alone responsible to the call of the world ; since it de
volves on you alone the duty of preserving honorable peace
and of securing just war, so far as any such national duty
exists on any body ; since it subjects you to the general law
of nations, and imposes on you, as a nation, the duty of obe
dience to it, does it not clothe you with the power to provide for

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. . 49
the administration of that law ? Is not this a necessary and
proper means to execute a clear power, and to perform a clear
duty 1 When the Constitution placed you in such a position
that it became your duty to other nations to observe the laws
of nations, did it not mean to make it your duty also to the
Constitution itself, and to the people, or to the States by
whora and for whora it was framed, to observe those laws?
Aud, if so, did it not give you the power to perforra the duty
which it thus imposed ? When it made you alone responsible
for the breach, did it refuse you the ability to secure the ob
servance ? When it forever relieved the States from responsi
bility for the violation of that law, and transferred it to you,
did it still continue to them the uncontrollable jooe^er of viola
tion at your expense? "Ought not," in the terse and sen
tentious expression of " The Federalist," "the responsibility for
an injury to be accompanied with the faculty of prevent
ing it ? "
In a more general view, Sir, is there one single duty more
clearly yours, under the Constitution, than that of maintaining
just and honorable peace 1 Is it not your duty to other na
tions, as one of the vast faraily of nations, and to the people
and the States of this nation ? In subjecting you to the re
sponsibilities and burdens of war ; in submitting to your con
trol all the modes and forms in which this nation can possibly
have intercourse with any other nation ; iu clothing you exclu
sively with the power of negotiation and of 1;omraercial regula
tion ; in depriving the States of all the kuown iustrumentality
of cultivating national peace, does not the Constitution put it
out of all doubt that it iraposes this duty on you ? And, if
so, has it not given you the ordinary, indispensable, national
means of performing the duty ? And is not the observance
of the laws of nations among those means ? Can you not
constitutionally preserve peace, by obeying the law to which
the Constitution has subjected you ? Can you not preserve
peace, by performing the duties to others which the Constitu
tion exacts of you ? Has the Constitution brought you into a
world of war, and yet given you no power to be at peace, and
no power to attract to yourselves the regard and sympathy of
man, by just sentiments and just conduct? Has it set you
upon the seat, and put into your hands the reins of the chariot
VOL. n. 5

50 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
of the sun, and yet given you no power to keep the safe and
open highway of heaven, — shunning the serpent constella
tion on the one hand, and the altar on the other ?
I submit, then. Sir, that the case stands thus clear and
simple. You may pass all laws necessary and proper to
execute any constitutional power, or perform any constitu
tional duty of the general government. Among those powers
and duties is that of preserving peace, by observing interna
tional law. Then you have the power to secure that observ
ance, and of course the power to pass this part of this bill,
adopting and executing it so far as it regulates foreign inter
course. The Senator from Pennsylvania has told you, indeed, that
the States are bound to observe the laws of nations ; and
therefore, of course, that you have not the power to pass a
law, of your own, like this bill, providing for their adoption
and administration. But is this so ? In the first place, sup
posing the States are thus bound ; it does not prove that you
have not the power for which I am contending. So are the
States bound to obey the Constitution, and the treaties, and
the laws of the United States ; but have you, therefore, not
the power to provide, by your own direct act, for their admin
istration and their execution ? Do you, or need you, refer it
to the good pleasure of the States, whether the Constitution,
laws, and treaties are observed or not ? Does their duty df
obedience take avi'ay your potver of administration ?
But how far or to what useful purpose in argument is it
true at all, that the States are bound to obey the laws of
nations ? There is a loose and inadequate sense, no doubt, in
which the States, and every individual member of every State,
and of every civilized commonwealth, a)ay be said to be so
bound. But are they bound as you are ; in the sarae sense ;
to the same extent; under tiie same responsibilities; with the
sarae consequences ¦? No indeed. Sir. Can they answer for a
violation of them by war ? No. Can they compensate for
such violation by treaty'? No. Can they unite with other
nations in defining their principles ; declaring the rights
secured ; and the wrongs forbidden by them ; in varying
and accommodating them from age to age so as to keep pace
with the ebb and flow of human affairs ; and the general,

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 51
though slow and interrupted, advancement of civilization 1
No, Are they bound by them in any other sense than every
merchant and every sailor in the world is bound by them 'i Is
not the law of nations a law /or nations'? Are not its subjects
independent comraonwealths ? Is not the absolute equality of
all the nations to whom it extends its very frst principle ?
May you not just as well say that the States are bound to
preserve national peace 1 So in one sense they are ; so are
we all. But is there not a peculiar and constitutional sense in
which that is the duty of this government alone ?
I cannot think, then. Sir, that the reasoning on which I have
deduced your power to provide for adopting and administering
the laws of nations, from your general constitutional powers
and duties, is answered by this position of the learned and
honorable Senator,
Let rae say, before leaving this branch of the discussion,
that the writers of " The Federalist," in the passage from the
eightieth number of that work which I just now read, assume
it as clear and conceded by the opponents of the Constitution,
that causes, in which citizens of other countries are concerned,
and which arise upon the laws of nations, will be cognizable by
the national judiciary. They do not, therefore, discuss that
proposition at all, but, taking it for granted, proceed to argue
that all causes affecting foreigners, although not arising upon
the laws of nations, should be committed to the same judiciary.
But see now if the power may not be deduced from specific
provisions of the Constitution. I have reraarked that, every
where, in numerous provisions, the Constitution assumes that
you observe the laws of nations. In making war, concluding
peace, in trade, in negotiation, in all your intercourse with the
world, it supposes it. But look a little more nearly. There
is the treaty-making power. The general government, the
executive of that government, may make treaties, and, when
made, they are supreme law ; displacing and overriding the
State law wherever it stands in their way ; and they are ex
pressly coraraitted to the administration, exclusively so, in the
last resort, of the national courts. Now, without attempting
to define the exact and whole extent of this power, and to
enumerate all things that it can do, and that it cannot, I
submit to you that it is perfectly clear that it enables the

52 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
executive of this government to do, by a treaty, exactly
what we seek to do by the law-making part of this bill ; that
is, to engage the faith and honor of this nation, that, in all
cases in which, by the laws of nations, the rights and liabilities
of foreigners, subjects of other governraents, domiciled abroad,
depend not on the municipal law, but on the laws of nations,
mitigating and superseding it, that those laws shall form the
code of trial. Does any senator deny the power of the exec
utive to make such a treaty ? Is there a particle of doubt that
the treaty might even be made to go farther, and define the
cases which the laws of nations should govern, dealing with
just such cases as McLeod's, for exaraple, and forraally, and
in terms, declaring, not only that such a case should be
governed by the laws of nations, but that, by that code, he
ought to be released ; thus not only applying, but declaring
the law'? I should hardly be excused for debating this prop
osition, or citing an authority for it. In the case of Holmes
V. Jennison, in 14 Pet. S. J. C. U. S. 569, the chief justice
observes, " The power to make treaties is given by the Con
stitution in general terras without any description of the ob
jects intended to be erabraced by it ; and consequently it was
designed to include all those subjects which, in the ordinary
intercourse of nations, have usually been raade subjects of
negotiation and treaty, which are consistent with the nature of
our institutions and the distributions of powers between the
general and State governments. Without attempting to
define the exact limits of the treaty-making power, or to
enumerate the subjects intended to be included in it, it may
safely be assumed that the recognition and enforcement of the
principles of public law, being one of the ordinary subjects of
treaties, were necessarily included in the power conferred on
the general government." And Mr. Justice Barber, dissent
ing from the chief justice, and those learned members of tbe
bench who concurred with him, on the general question in the
case, however, distinctly admits " that" as, by the usage of
natioris as well as by the practice of the United States, the
surrender of fugitives is deemed to be a proper subject of a
treaty; that, therefore, it is competent to the president and
senate to make treaties in relation to that subject "  tlius
extending the treaty-raaking power to the limit of known and
ordinary national usage, (S. C. p, 589.)

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 3$
Everything, then, which this bill seeks to do, the general
government might do by treaty. So much is certain. I do
not say that it follows that you can therefore do the same
thing by a law. That depends not on the comparative pow
ers of the State and national governments, but on the distri
bution of federal power itself among the departments. But
the State-right argument against the bill is forever silenced by
this consideration. How can it be pretended, as we have
heard it urged, that it plunders the States of that poor,
shrunken residue of sovereignty which the Constitution se
cured to them ; that it wrests an inalienable as well as a
favorite jurisdiction out of their hands ; robbing them of their
proud and cherished privilege of vindicating the supreraacy
of their own criminal law, when, beyond a shadow of doubt,
there is a department of the general government that can
rightfully do the whole work of the bill in a raoraent ?
Into the question, whether we may not do by law what the
executive could do by treaty, I do not propose to enter. The
subject is discussed somewhat by Mr. Madison, in the papers
under the signature of Helvidius, in reply to Pacificus, by
General Hamilton ; and wtis very elaborately debated by the
House of Representatives in 1815, on a bill to carry into
eff'ect a comraercial convention with Great Britain. My gen
eral opinion is, that within our own territory, in so far as
direct action on our own citizens and others within it is in
volved, we may do all things, for the preservation of national
peace, by law, that we could do by treaty. If, with a view to
the preservation of peace, we can incorporate the laws of
nations into the laws of the United States for the government
of our own territory by treaty, then, with a view to the same
end, we can do it by law. The treaty-making function can
only be exerted to execute some power or perform sorae duty
of the Constitution ; and the law-making function, infra ter
ritorially, can be exerted for such purpose, and with similar
efficacy. But there is another provision of the Constitution which
seems to put an end to this question. Congress is expressly
authorized " to define and punish offences against the laws of
nations." Pause for a moment on this, and see how much
more power it gives you than you attempt to exert in this
5*

54 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
bill. The single question we are discussing is, whether we
have not the constitutional gower to adopt and execute the
laws of nations, — as and for our own law, — in so far as
they protect foreigners, under special circumstances, from im
prisonment in violation of them, by the municipal law of a
State, for acts done within our territory. This bill, to that
extent, adopts .those laws, treats such imprisonment as an
offence against them, and relieves frora it accordingly.
Now, I have to say that this provision seems to me forever
to settle the question. It commits to Congress the exclusive
and the entire administration of the whole law of nations as
a criminal code, in just so raany words. It authorizes you to
pass a statute which shall formally declare the laws of nations
to be the law of the United States, and shall formally pro
hibit all off'ences against them, which shall enumerate and clas
sify and define every one of those offences ; shall relieve and
protect the person, or the right against which the offence is
committed, and shall punish the offender. Against the pro
visions of such a statute, of course, no law of a State, and
no judicial decision of a State could be set up. It becomes,
by express terms of the Constitution, supreme law. If an
act, by .whomsoever done or authorized, is an offence against
the law of nations, you may prohibit it. Whether an act be
such offisnce or not depends, not on the perhaps conflicting
definitions of twenty-six States, but on your definition. How
it shall be relieved against ; how it shall be punished ; whether
it shall be relieved against or punished at all, depends not
upon the perhaps conflicting wills of twenty-six States, but
on your will. If a doubt is raoved whether you have not
declared an act to be an offence against the laws of nations
which was no such offence, thus usurping upon the municipal
jurisprudence and legislation of a State, this, like every
other judicial question on the validity of a law of the United
States, must be determined by the national judiciary.
Such is the palpable extent and sense of this provision.
See, then, in the first place, how corapletely it answers the
arguraent, that the general governraent is bound to presume
that the States will execute the laws of nations, and to rely
upon them for it accordingly; that their relations to these
laws are the sarae with yours ; and that though responsible

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 53
for their violation, you have no adequate and supreme power
to secure their observance. Sir, this provision was inserted,
in part, to enable you to prevent those violations of these laws
by everybody, States and persons, which might give just
offence to the rest of the world. Speaking of this very sub
ject, Mr. Madison says, in a paper of " The Federalist," which
I have before referred to — the forty-second number — "these
articles" (the articles of confederation) "contain no provision
for the case of off'ences against the laws of nations, and conse
quently leave it in the power of any indiscreet member to em
broil the confederacy with foreign nations." It was inserted
to enable you to preserve peace by keeping the law to which
as a nation the Constitution had subjected you, and for whose
just and uniform administration the world was authorized to
hold you to answer.
But I would have you remark a little raore particularly
how fully this provision authorizes you to do all, and a great
deal more than all, which is attempted by this bill. You
might, as I have said, enumerate the cases, in which the im
prisonment, under the authority of a State, of a foreign sub
ject, domiciled abroad and pleading the laws of nations, would
be an offence against those laws ; and you might provide both
for punishing and for relieving from that imprisonment. You
might, for instance, deal with such a transaction as that of the
burning of The Caroline. You might declare it an offence
against the lavvs of nations ; but the individual actors in the
business — the soldier, the sailor, whose government set him
the inglorious and perilous task of midnight war — these act
ors you might declare to be clothed with perfect iraraunity
by that same manly and just code ; and that therefore to im
prison them, as for a breach of municipal law, was itself an
offence against that code for which you raight relieve and for
which you raight punish. All this you might do, because all
this is but a defining and punishing of offences against the law
of nations, which is one of your enuraerated powers. If it
were doubted whether such an imprisonment were properly
declared, in the cases specified, to be an offence against these
laws, the national judiciary is appointed by the Constitution
the tribunal to resolve the doubt.
Now, Sir, how far \vithin these limits of your undoubted

56 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
power is the whole action of this bill ! Instead of enumer
ating the cases in which the imprisonment of a foreigner by
the authority of a State is an offence against the laws of
nations, you refer it at once to the judicial power to ascertain
whether a given case, judicially presented, is such an one or
not. Instead of providing for punishing, as well as for re
lieving from such imprisonment, you, with a wise abstemious
ness, provide for relieving from it only. And will anybody
say that the proposed law is void, because it does not go far
enough? Does not the Constitution commit it to a sound
legislative discretion to determine whether you shall define an
offence, or whether you shall adopt the definition of the laws
of nations, and refer it to the judicial power to collect and
pronounce that definition ? By the ninth section of the ju
diciary act, concurrent jurisdiction is committed to the district
courts " of all causes where an alien sues for a tort only in
violation of the law of nations." Is this void, because, in
stead of enumerating and defining those torts, the courts are
authorized to pronounce, by recurrence to that law, whether
in a given case such an one has been committed "? The act of
congress of 1819, v. 6, p. 489, sec. 5, enacts that if any
person shall on the high seas commit the crime of piracy, as
defined by the law of nations, he shall suff"er death ; and yet
it was holden in the case of The United States v. Smith, (5
Wheaton, 153,) that this was a constitutional exercise of the
power of congress to define and punish piracy.
Is it not intrusted also to a sound legislative discretion to
say whether it will do more than relieve the foreign subject
from the illegal punishment 1 Is there any compulsory duty
to go further and incur the odium of punishing the native of
fender also \ Is there any obligation on you to do all in one
bill ? You raight as well say the judiciary act is void, be
cause it does not exhaust the whole constitutional grant of
federal jurisdiction.
I cannot doubt, then, Mr. President, on a view of the gen
eral structure, objects, and powers of the Constitution, and on
a narrower inspection of its particular provisions, that you
may constitutionally pass this bill so far as it is a law-making
bill. You may adopt and provide for an administration of the
laws of nations, so far as they exempt and relieve foreign sub-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE.

57

jects, domiciled abroad, from the imprisonment or other punish
ment, inflicted under municipal law, in violation of their prin
ciples and their policy.
The next question is, whether jurisdiction of cases under
this bill — the judicial administration and execution of the bill
— may be given to the national courts ?
Sir, I suppose this to be no question at all.
tn the first place, cases under this bill — cases under the laws
of nations, as adopted by this bill — become instantly cases
arising, in the very terras of the Constitution, " under a law
of the United States," to which your judicial power is ex
pressly extended. They arise under this very statute. This
statute, this formal act of your legislative power, makes, by
adoption, the law which tries them. I subject you to this
dilemma. If the Constitution, by direct operation, raakes the
laws of nations your law, then these cases arise under the
Constitution. If by this statute they are raade such, then the
cases arise under a law of the United States ; and either
way are unquestionably within your judicial power.
Certainly these cases do not the less strictly and the less
properly arise under a law of the United States, that you
adopt the laws of nations by a general reference and a general
denomination. If you assumed, by this statute, to codify that
venerable and ample jurisprudence, to define and classify the
offences which it prohibits, and to anticipate and provide for
all the cases in which it may interpose to control the narrow
technicalities, and unyielding, conventional, and arbitrary rules
of municipal law, then all would adrait, I suppose, that the
very cases conteraplated in the bill, as now it is framed, would
arise under a law of the United States, and go constitutionally
to the national judiciary. But it obviously comes exactly to
the same thing, when you incorporate the international law
into your own by general reference. So you did by the fifth
section of the act of congress of 1819, which I have just read
to you ; and yet, an indictment on that section, is it not upon,
and should it not conclude against the form of, the statute of
the United States ?
Since, then. Sir, in a trial under this act, the defendant sets
up a right, privilege, or exemption, secured him by a statute
of congress, within the words of the Constitution, and the

58 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
exposition of its meaning by the twenty-fifth section of the
judiciary act, the case arises under a law of the United States,
and your jurisdiction is perfect.
But in a more general view. Sir, this statute is a declara
tion, by the legislative power of this government, constitution
ally put forth, that the laws of nations, to a certain extent,
shall be administered in the United States. It follows, as a
matter of course, under our system, that the national tribunals
are to execute that declaration, and, in the last resort, to do so
exclusively. Is it not, as Chief Justice Marshall, in the case of Cohens
V. The State of Virginia, pronounced it, as every elementary
writer on government has pronounced it, an axiom, that the
judicial power, in so far as judicial questions, judicial cases,
can arise, is coextensive with the legislative power '? Is it
not an axiom, that the adrainistrative and executive power is
coextensive with the law-making power ? . The government
which can will, which can decree, can it not enforce ? Does
not tbe Constitution embody and announce this great principle,
when, departing frora and ascending above the timidity and
the imbecility of the old Confederation, it declares that "the
judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising
under the Constitution, the laws, and treaties of the United
States ; " and " that this Constitution, and the laws of the
United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and
all treaties raade under the authority of the United States, shall
be the supreme law of the land " ? The Senator from Penn
sylvania admits that the judiciary act is constitutional; and does
not that act proceed on and execute this exact principle ? Can
you imagine a case in which it was more important that the
Constitution should not have- left it to the States to execute
your legislative will, to refuse to execute it at all, to miscon
strue it, to construe it diversely, than it is in these very cases
in this bill ? You see, I think I have shown, that the Consti
tution, on a large, obvious, unavoidable policy, to enable you
to preserve peace, by performing your national duties, and
rightly ordering your national life, has authorized you, by
legislation, to adopt the laws of nations, and to declare that
they shall be administered. And now, having gone so far, do
you think it stops short and withholds from your own judiciary

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE., 59
the power to execute that declaration ? Does not every con
sideration which dictated the intrusting of this power to the
national legislature demand that the national judiciary, in
its sphere and mode, should have it too '? Why, Sir, you have
seen that it was especially held in view in the construction of
the judicial department, that it should be armed with the means
of executing the precise policy of this bill, — the preservation
of the national harmony. And, after all that, can you imagine
that the Constitution is so incongruous and unintelligible
and poor a mimicry of government, as to clothe you, for
reasons of peace and justice, with power to adopt a code of
laws, the boast, the glory of which is, that it is not oiie thing
at Rome and another at Athens ; one thing to-day, and an
other to-morrow ; but that it reaches to the farthest verge of
civilization ; the same everywhere and always ; the guardian
of the sailor's midnight sleep ; the sovereign of the king on
his throne ; and yet, leave it to six-and-twenty States to change
it into six-and-twenty conflicting codes, or to annul it alto
gether ? Sir, the thing is so absurd, that I lose the practical
in the intellectual contemplation. It is not so much a bad
govemment as an impossible idea. There is such a " recon
ciliation of antipathies " in it ; such boastful and large preten
sions, and such insignificant perforraance ; such an exaction of
obligation, with such denial of free-will ; it so mocks you with
such a semblance of power, without a particle of the reality,
that the understanding does not so truly refuse to believe, as
admit its inability to comprehend. The serene writers of
"The Federalist" pronounce such a thing "a hydra in govern
ment," and I confess I do not think it too far-sought or too
harsh an illustration.
But, Mr. President, to those of us who admit that the judi
ciary act is constitutional, and who receive the decisions of the
supreme national court as the law of the land, these general
reasonings are superfluous, or worse. If the law-making por
tion of this bill is constitutional, the jurisdiction of the national
judiciary follows of course. The acquiescence of fifty years, of
every administration, every party, the refusal of congress to
repeal the judiciary act, repeated and masterly judgments of
the courts, concur to declare that, in the public opinion of
America, this branch of this question is wholly at rest.

60 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
One word only, therefore, upon an objection or two of the
honorable Senator, not yet particularly adverted to, and I
relieve your attention.
It has been said that, even if the Constitution or this bill
makes the laws of nations the law of the United States, the
State courts may be relied on to adrainister them; because
the laws of the United States are the laws of the separate
States also. But is not the Constitution, are not the treaties,
is not every law of the United States, the supreme law of the
States; and yet, does not the Constitution expressly extend
your judicial power to all of them 1
The Senator has said, too, that to give this jurisdiction to
the national courts is to interpolate, after the words of the
Constitution, "the judicial power shall extend to all cases aris
ing under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and
treaties made under their authority," these words, " and the
laws of nations; " and that is to change the Constitution, By
no means. Sir, That would indeed be to change the Constitu
tion ; for, undoubtedly, not every case arising under the laws
of nations is within your jurisdiction. Such there are, many
such, between citizens of the same State, on policies of insur
ance, for example ; cases turning wholly on the application of
that code to breaches of blockade, neutral conduct and liabili
ties, the character and the consequences of illicit trade, and the
like. But it is not of such cases, between such parties, that
you can give jurisdiction to the national tribunals. It is of
such only as, in their prosecution or their defence, involve,
depend on, and accoraplish, sorae power conferred, or some
duty imposed, by the Constitution. The portion of the great
and entire international code which you can adopt, and can
administer, is that which regulates our intercourse with, and
our duties toward, other nations, their subjects and their
governraents. That portion only you adopt and administer by
this bill. You do this as a means of exerting some power
conferred, or performing some duty imposed, by the Constitu
tion. You do it in execution of the Constitution. All the
cases which arise, under this part of this bill, are cases under
the laws of nations, indeed, in one sense ; but, in a true, large,
and ultimate sense, they are cases under the Constitution, too,
and a law of the United States " made in pursuance thereof."

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 61
In truth, the title, right, privilege, or exemption, supposed by
this bill to be set up and claimed under the laws of nations, is
really set up or claimed under the Constitution, and a constitu
tional statute; and I have no doubt at all, that, within the
twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act, a decision against such
claim or exemption, in the highest court of a State, could now
be removed by writ of error to the Supreme National Court.
There is no enlargement, then, and no change of the judicial
power of the Constitution by this bill. We interpolate noth
ing. We just make a constitutional statute, adopting a part
of the law of nations, and then, within the precise words, and
the necessary and obvious spirit of the Constitution, we give
to your tribunals the cases arising under it.
The bill under consideration provides for the interposition
of the national courts by habeas corpus, where the foreign sub
ject is imprisoned for acts done " under any alleged right,
title, authority, privilege, protection, or exemption, set up or
claimed under die law of nations, or under the commission or
order or sanction of any foreign State or sovereignty, or under
color thereof." The description of cases last mentioned in this
enumeration, - — cases arising under the commission, order, or
sanction of any foreign State or sovereignty, — arise, like the
former, under the laws of nations. They are only one class,
or one illustration, of cases so arising. The eff'ect which is to
be allowed to such commission, order, or sanction, for the pro
tection and defence of a foreigner imprisoned under the author
ity of the State courts, depends on that code alone ; and per
haps there was no urgent necessity, in the construction of this
bill, to single out these, for enumeration, rather than any other
cases to which that code applies, and over which, of course,
this jurisdiction should be extended. And yet it may have
been proper to do so, because, more almost than any other,
they exemplify the grounds and the importance of a national,
legislative, and judicial control, to the extent proposed by the
bill. Take the case of The Caroline and of McLeod, for an
instance, and see how conclusively it refutes that large State-
rights doctrine which has been contended for here, and now,
as well as elsewhere, and formerly — the doctrine of a right
in the States, as against the general government, to try, in
their own courts, and under their own laws, the individual
VOL. n. 6

62 SPEECHES IN THE UNiri'ED STATES SENATE.
actors in such a transaction, and overruling the plea of the
laws of nations, to execute them for murder against the form
of the statute of the State. Sir, without repeating any of the
general reasoning, on which I have detained you too long
already, and without troubling you further on the particular
character of this bill, I submit that a State right to this
extent cannot be maintained for a moment.
Of your general jurisdiction over such a transaction, your
jurisdiction to some extent, and for some purposes, there is of
course no doubt. That it was an entry upon our territory by
the government of Great Britain ; that it was a wrongful
entry upon a neutral territory ; that this constitutes an off'ence
by a nation against a nation, against the Union under the
general government, against this nation ; that it was attended
and was consummated by the instrumentality of war, — by
organized, armed men, by the application of military force, by
terror, and by the shedding of blood — all this we all admit
and all assert, the former Secretary of State as well as the
present, the last administration as well as this, all who have
debated the American side of the question, in and out of con
gress, from the burning of The Caroline to this hour. And
this we assert, qu the most satisfactory evidence for the facts,
and the most conclusive and most venerable authority for the
law. It follows, of course, that of this transaction, as a national
wrong against this nation, the general government has a
general jurisdiction to some extent and for some purposes.
This also we all admit. In the exercise of that acknowl
edged and undoubted jurisdiction, Mr. Forsyth, Mr. Steven
son, and Mr. Webster, have successively complained of it, and
demanded redress. In the exercise of that jurisdiction, nego
tiations are at this moment pending between the two national
governments, with the acquiescence of everybody. The actor
being a nation; the recipient of the wrong a nation; the
means of redress and of adjustment, reprisals, declared war,
negotiation, being all national, and such as you alone can
employ, this general jurisdiction for the purposes of diplo
macy is conceded as a thing of course.
Observe, too', under another view, how comprehensive and
how controlling is your general legislative, as well as diplo-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 63
matic jurisdiction, over such transactions. You do not doubt
thkt congress may pass a law declaring that prisoners taken
during an actual war within a State shall be deemed subject to
the laws of nations, shall be placed in the custody of the execu
tive officers of the United States, and that the President may
provide for their safe-keeping, support, and exchange. Such,
in effect, was the legislation of congress in 1812, by the acts
of June 26, sec. 7? ^^^ July 6- You deduce your power to
do this from the powers to declare war and to conclude peace,
both belonging to the general government, the first to you and
the other to the executive.
Well, Sir, have you not just as much power to declare that
such acts as the burning of The Caroline are acts of war, un
lawful, informal, insolemn, but acts of war ; that they are acts
of war by the government of Great Britain upon the United
States ; that, as such, the laws of nations become applicable to
them ; and that the liabilities and immunities of the individual
actors in particular must be determined by that code ? Much
edifying discussion there has been, in and out of congress,
much expenditure of learning and logic, to show that a State
court of justice could not recognize that transaction as an act
of war. But has anybody denied that congress might de
clare it and all similar transactions to be acts of war ? Pray,
Sir, has not this government, and has not that branch of this
government to which it belongs to declare war, the power to
declare what, in the judgment of this nation, is the true char
acter of a particular wrong done by another nation to this 1
Has not the legislature, which may declare that a particular
act of a foreign government justifies and requires an open war,
the right to pronounce that the particular act itself assumed
the nature and the guilt of war, and was war while it cow-
tinued, as far as it extended, and in what it did ? I believe
nobody will doubt this. Then you may pass a law to-day
declaring that exactly such enterprises as that against The
Caroline are and shall be deemed and taken to be acts of war,
unlawftd, informal, insolemn, by the government which perpe
trates them against the United States. You may, therefore,
as you did in 1812, declare that the individual actors, if taken,
shall be prisoners of war, subjected to the laws of nations,
held in custody by the general government, and exchanged
by the executive.

64 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Well, now. Sir, setting out with this incontestable, general,
diplomatic, and legislative jurisdiction, and these plain powers
of this government over such transactions, is it not perfectly
palpable that you cannot stop short of the conclusion that you
have a general jurisdiction over all parts of them, including the
case of the individual actors, which is repugnant altogether and
fatal to the claim of State power, which I am now exaraining?
The truth seems to be that these transactions, and such as
these, are entire transactions. They are in their nature, and
from the necessity of the case, indivisible. They are wholly
within the domain of national diplomacy, for example, as
against the State claim of jurisdiction, or they are not within
it at all. You admit that this government may adjust the
transaction, as a, governmental act of England, by negotiation.
Under its power to make treaties, to conclude peace, to regu
late foreign intercourse, you admit that it may and must do
this. But if it can do this, it can adjust the case of the indi
vidual actors, too. Nobody can so much as conceive a theory
of the extent and nature of your treaty-making functions, ac
cording to which they should include one of these powers and
not include the other. Why, Sir, one of the powers would be
totally useless without the other. Can you amicably and hon-'
orably adjust the controversy with the government which com
manded, while you declare your purpose, or a State declares its
purpose, to hang the servant who obeyed ? Will the foreign.
nation settle for itself, and leave its soldiers to be punished for
murder ? To render the treaty-making capacity of the slight
est value, then, it must cover the whole of the ground. And so
it must in every possible view. By immemorial usage it is the
means, it is the agent, by which to adjust the case of such of
the subjects of one nation as become implicated in its foreign
relations, and obnoxious to the complaints of another nation.
Then you may wield it for that purpose and to that extent.
By the universal understanding of the world, according to all
acknowledged principles of international law, in the nature of
things, in reason, in justice, tbe case of a nation which does a
wrong to another through the instrumentality of its servants,
and the case of the servants themselves, the national and the
individual offence and responsibility fall within the cognizance
of one and the same code ; constitute one complex but iiisepa-

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. Qg
rable consideration ; must be all adjusted together or all kept
open together. In truth, although it is not necessary for this
discussion to go so far, the fact that as, in such a transaction
as this, it is a nation which has entered your territory and per
petrated the act you coili plain of; that a foreign nation has
wielded an individual instrument to assail this nation — this
fact impresses instantly on the whole aff"air a mere and pure
national character, subjects it to national control, and merges,
annihilates, and excludes all subordinate constituents and all sub
ordinate and individual agency of crime. Certainly, at least, it
commits to one and the same jurisdiction the disposition and ad
justment of the public act, and of all such constituents and all
such agency. The conclusion is unavoidable, therefore, that the
State right here asserted cannot be set up against the powers of
the general government. As against them it has no existence.
You arrive at the same conclusion by a consideration of the
legislative power of this government over this kind of transac
tion, of which I have just spoken. If, by a legislative decla
ration that the invasion of our territory by force and by armed
men, the burning of The Caroline, and the destruction of life,
was an act of war, and that similar enterprises are acts of war,
you confessedly subject the actors in these transactions to the
control of the national government alone ; and if you may
make such a declaration, then what becomes of an asserted,
inalienable, constitutional State right to try and to hang such
_ actors as for a pure municipal offence ? Sir, it has no existence;
and the only question which is open at all is, whether you may
exert your own acknowledged power in the particular mode
proposed by the bill. The question is not whether you invade
any State right and transcend any power of the general gov
ernment by doing so, but whether you exercise your consti
tutional power in a constitutional way. That question I have
already too much at large attempted to answer.
I have left myself neither time nor strength to say much
upon the expediency of passing this law. It has been very
earnestly maintained by the Senator from Pennsylvania that,
even if you have the constitutional power to interpose your
appellate and supervising jurisdiction in this class of cases,
after judgment in the State courts, you have no constitutional
power to do it before judgment; and that, even if.it were
6*

QQ SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
expedient so to interpose after judgment, it is not expedient ta
do so before.
Let me say. Sir, in the first place, that, if you have power
to interpose after judgment, you have power to do so before.
If you can reverse a judgment, you can anticipate its rendition.
If, within the Constitution, your judicial power extends to these
cases or these controversies, whether you take hold of the case
or of the controversy in one stage or another, is totally imma
terial. The single question submitted to the national tribunals
— the question, whether, under the statute adopting the laws of
nations, the prisoner is entitled to the immunity or exemption
he claims — may as well be extracted from the entire case, and
presented and decided in those tribunals before any judgment
in the State court, as it can be revised afterwards, on writ of
error. Either way they pass on no other question. Either
way they do not administer the criminal law of a State. In
one case as much as in the other, and no more, do they inter
fere with the State judicial power.
And this. Sir, I understand to be the opinion of the Su
preme Court in Martin v. Hunter's lessee, 1 Wheaton, 304.
In the very masterly judgment pronounced by Mr. Justice
Story for the court, he says, (commenting on the power of re
moving causes frora State to the national courts before judg
ment, page 349) : " The existence of this power of removal is
familiar, in courts acting according to the course of the com
mon law, in criminal as well as civil cases, and it is exercised
before as well as after judgment. But this is always deemed,
in both cases, an exercise of appellate and not of original juris
diction. If, then, the right of removal be included in the
appellate jurisdiction, it is only because it is one mode of exer
cising that power, and, as congress is not limited by the Con
stitution to any particular mode or time of exercising it, it
may authorize a removal before or after judgment. The time,
the process, and the manner, must be subject to its absolute
legislative control." The honorable Senator interprets this
opinion differently, and relies, first, on a passage in it on page
592 of the third volume of the condensed reports, from which
he reads. But that passage applies only to a case where con
gress has made no law for the removal of the cause before
judgment, and does not touch the question of your power

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. , 67
to make such a law. His other citation, from page 597) is
equally inapplicable. It asserts nothing, and it says nothing,
of your power to remove the cause ; but intimates an appre
hension only that the removal would be unavailing, without an
attendant power to act on the State tribunal itself But, as
Mr. Justice Johnson observes, and as this bill supposes, the
removal by habeas corpus supplies all that is needed to make a
plain power an effectual one.
Hear Mr. Justice Johnson in the same case, page 379 :
" This method," (he is speaking of the removal of causes from the State
courts to the national, before judgment, as contrasted with the reversal of
the judgments of the State courts by writs of error,) " this method, so
much more unlikely to affect oflBcial delicacy than that which is resorted
to in the other class of cases, might, perhaps, have been more happily
applied to all the cases which the legislature thought it advisable to re
move from the State courts."
And, in another passage, that learned judge seems to antici
pate and advise the very process provided by this bill, page 38 1 :
" With this view, by means of laws avoiding judgments obtained in the
State courts, in cases over which congress has, constitutionally, assumed
jurisdiction, and inflicting penalties on parties who shall contumaciously
persist in infringing the constitutional rights of others, under a liberal ex
tension of the writ of injunction and the habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, I
flatter myself that the full extent of the constitutional revising power may
be secured to thei United States, and the benefits of it to the individual,
without ever resorting to compulsory or restrictive process upon the State
tribunals." The honorable Senator objects, too, that a removal of the
cause, before judgment, to the district court, and thence to the
circuit court by appeal, and thence, by a second appeal, to the
supreme court, results in giving to the supreme court orig
inal jurisdiction in a case where, by the Constitution, it can
take appellate jurisdiction only. This seems to me not very
intelligible, or, if intelligible, not at all sound. Certainly all
the jurisdiction which the supreme court obtains by this bill is
appellate in' the strictest sense. The cause is removed first to
the district court, and there tried once on its merits. It goes
thence, by appeal, to the circuit court, and is there tried on its
merits again. It passes, at last, to the supreme court, where
it is finally and fully tried on its merits again ; and yet, ob
taining the cause through this series of appeals, the supreme

68 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
court is supposed to exercise original, not appellate, jurisdic
tion. True, the State court did not try the cause, and, if the
bill removed it per saltum, by the writ of liberty, from that to
the supreme court, it might be objected that it communicated
original jurisdiction to the supreme court. But it does no
such thing. Surely it is not meant to be said that the juris
diction which it does give to the supreme court is not appel
late, because the appeal is from a federal court, and not,
directly or indirectly, from a State court ? Appellate jurisdic
tion is that which is exercised by a court over causes submit
ted to it by appeal from another court. This is all it means
in this part of the Constitution, This is exactly the jurisdic
tion given in this bill to the supreme court. To say that, be
cause you cannot remove the cause at once, before judgment,
by habeas corpus, to the supreme court, you cannot do it in
directly, mediately, through the district and circuit courts, after
successive trials there, is to say that you cannot give appellate,
because you cannot give original jurisdiction. If no more is
meant, however, to be said, than that the State court must try
the cause to judgment before it can be removed at all, why
this, of course, assumes the precise proposition to be proved.
I submit, too. Sir, that if it be expedient to review judgments
of the State courts in this description of cases, it is expedient
to interpose before they are rendered. The honorable Senator
vehemently contends that it is odious and off'ensive to the States
not to wait till judgment, humiliating to their pride, exasperat
ing to their feelings, — the last and unkindest cut of all, to their
dimmed, affronted, and diminished sovereignty. Sir, mark
the change of time and opinion. Within five minutes he has
interrupted me to remind you that the counsel in Martin v.
Hunter's lessee, contended that, as matter of policy, to disarm
the controlling jurisdiction of your courts, as far as might be,
of its harsher and more offensive aspects and operation, it
ought to be exerted in the earliest practicable stage of the pro
ceeding below. Such was Mr, Justice Johnson's opinion in
the same case. Such, I own, is mine. In the beginning of
these prosecutions, little or no interest may be felt by anybody.
The private prosecutor, the court, the law-officer of the State,
and the counsel of the prisoner, alone, know or care much
about the matter ; and a preliminary and single issue of law,

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE. 69
or fact, or both, to settle the question of the claim of exemp
tion frora the criminal jurisprudence" of the State, may be
framed, and submitted, and even decided quietly, and without
excitement. But let the cause go forward in the court of the
State ; let the jury try it ; let the bar discuss it before the as
sembled country ; let the press, and let party ky hold on it ;
let a foreign government begin to take the matter up ; enlist
the pride and the sense of character of the bench, and the
wbole State, by an elaborate judgraent, fully committing their
judicial reputation against the exemption claimed ; and then
the interposition of the national tribunals becomes, indeed, an
odious and perilous enterprise.
Besides, Sir, in determining upon the stage in which you
are to interpose, if you will interpose at all, you will not lose
sight of the consideration, that the object of your interposition^
the ground on which you are authorized to interpose at all, is
the preservation of the national peace. A leading question
would be, therefore, whether the earliest will not be the
most efi'ectual interposition for the great object in view ? Is
it not so, that the sooner the prisoner is in the hands and
within the control of the government, to which his country
looks for his deliverance, — the government which must insure
his acquittal, or answer for his condemnation, — the better for
all parties'?
But the honorable Senator is against your jurisdiction in all
forms and in all stages. Sir, I' cannot concur with him. I would
assert the jurisdiction, on the contrary, on the same grand, gen
eral reason, for which it was given to you. It was given as a
means of enabling you to preserve honorable peace, or to secure
the next best thing, a just war, a war into which we may carry
the sympathies and the praise and the assistance of the world.
Accept and exert it for these great ends. Do not be deterred
from doing so, and from doing so now, by what the honorable
Senator so many times repeated to you, that negotiations are
pending with England ; that she has insulted and menaced
you, and withheld reparation, and withheld apology ; and that,
therefore, the passage of the bill, at this moment, would be an
unmanly and unseasonable courtesy or concession to her. How
much England knows or cares about the passage of this bill ;
what new reason it may aff'ord to the Foreign Quarterly Re-

70 SPEECHES 'IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
view for predicting the approach of his monarchical millennium
in America, we need not, I believe, no one here, need know or
care. But does it mark unmanly fear of England, an unmanly
haste to propitiate, her good-will, because I would commit the
quiet and the glory of my country to you ? Where should the
peace of the nation repose, but beneath the folds of the nation's
flag ? Do not fear, either, that you are about to undervalue
the learning, abilities, and integrity of the State tribunals.
Sir, my whole life has been a constant experience of their
learning, abilities, and integrity ; but I do not conceive that I
distrust or disparage them, when I have the honor to agree
with the Constitution itself, that yours are the hands to hold
the mighty issues of peace and war.
Mr. President, how strikingly all things, and every passing
hour, illustrate the wisdom of those great men who looked to
the Union, the Union under a general government, for the
preservation of peace, at home and abroad, between us and the
world, among the States, and in each State. Turn your eyes
eastward and northward, and see how this vast, but restrained
and parental, central power holds at rest a thousand spirits, a
thousand elements of strife ! There is Maine. How long
would it be, if she were independent, before her hardy and gal
lant children would pour themselves over the disputed terri
tory, like the flakes of her own snow-storms 1 How long, if
New York were so, before that tumultuous frontier would
blaze with ten thousand " bale fires " 1 Our own beautiful and
beloved Rhode Island herself, with which the Senator rebukes
you for interfering, is it not happy even for her, that her star,
instead of shining alone and apart in the sky, blends its hght
with so many kindred rays, whose influence may save it from
shooting madly from its sphere ?
The aspect which our united America turns upon foreign
nations, the aspect which the Constitution designs she shall
turn on them, the guardian of our honor, the guardian of our
peace, is, after all, her grandest and her fairest aspect. We
have a right to be proud when we look on that. Happy and
free empress mother of States themselves free, unagitated by
the passions, unmoved by the dissensions of any one of them,
she watches the rights and fame of all, and reposing, secure
and serene, among the raountain summits of her freedom, she

ON PROVIDING FURTHER REMEDIAL JUSTICE.

71

holds in one hand the fair olive branch of peace, and in the
other the thunderbolt and meteor flag of reluctant and right
ful war. There may she sit forever, — the stars of union upon
her brow, the rock of > independence beneath her feet !
Mr. President, it is because this bill seems to me well cal
culated to accomplish one of the chief original ends of the Con
stitution that it has my hearty support.

SPEECH ON THE POWER AND DUTY OF CONGRESS TO
CONTINUE THE POLICY OF PROTECTING AMERICAN
LABOR.
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE 01 THE ITNITED STATES, MARCH 14, 1842.

[The resolutions of Mr. Clat being under consideration, one of which
was in the following terms :
" Resolved, That, in the adjustment of a tariff to raise an amount of
twenty-six millions of revenue, the principles of the Compromise Act gen
erally should be adhered to, and that especially a maximum rate of ad
valorem duties should be established, from which there ought to be as little
departure as po.ssible," Mr. Choate spoke as follows : ]
Mr. President, —
I HAD wished to say something on one branch of one of the
subjects to which the resolutions extend ; I mean that of the
readjustment of the tariff", as it may affect domestic industry.
In my view, it is the great subject of the session and of the day.
I agree with the Pennsylvania memorialists, whose petition
has just been read, that the subject of the currency — diffi
cult, delicate, and important as it is, and creditable as it will
be to my friend from New York, [Mr. Tallmadge,] and use
ful to the country to adjust it — bears no comparison, in point
of importance, with this. We are coming, whether we will
or not, by the progress of the Comproraise Act, to an era
in the history of the national industry and the national pros
perity. We have it in our power to mark this era by the
commission of a stupendous raistake, or by the realization
of a splendid felicity and wisdom of policy. This yery tans'
which we are about to construct 'may, on the one hand, para
lyze American labor, drive it from many of its best fields of

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. HQ
employment, arrest the development of our resources of growth
and wealth, and even the development of the mind and genius
of America, our main resource, turning back the current of
our national fortunes for an age ; or it raay, on the other hand,
coraraunicate an impulse, that shall be felt after we are in our
graves, to that harmonized agricultural, manufacturing, and
commercial industry, which alone can fill the measure of this
or of any country's glory.
Under this impression of the importance of the subject, I
have wished to take part in the discussion of it. In the present
stage, however, of this business of arranging the tariff' in the
two houses of congress, — with no bill before us, with no report
of either of the committees on manufactures, although we
have had a very able speech from the chairman of our own
committee, [Mr. Siraraons,] unaided to any considerable and
useful extent by the voice of the country, which, if I do not
misunderstand the country, will come up, peremptory and un
equivocal, the moment you have a bill reported, and before, if
that is delayed much longer, — I do not think it expedient, or
even practicable, to go far into the consideration of details. I
mean to abstain from them altogether at this tirae. I move
no question now about the amount of annual revenue which
you will require for the wants of government, nor whether
you should raise it from duties on imports alone, or partly
from the proceeds of the public lands. I have nothing now
to say about specific' duties or ad valorem duties, horizontal or
discriminating tariffs, home valuation or foreign valuation.
The actual state of inforraation before us, in parliamentary
and authentic form, is not such as to make it worth while to
anticipate that kind of discussion. But there is one prelimi
nary and general principle upon which I shall consider myself
obliged to stand ; by which 1 shall consider myself obliged to
try every question of detail that shall present itself; and which
it may be as fair and proper to announce at this moment as at
any other ; and that is, that congress has the constitutional
power so to provide for the collection of the necessary rev
enues of government as to afford reasonable and adequate
protection to the whole labor of the country, agricultural, navi
gating, mechanical, and manufacturing, and ought to afford
that protection. This general principle I shall take with me
VOL. II. 7

^4 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
through all this investigation ; and it is the only one which it is
necessary now to declare. I mean by this to say, that I shall
enter on this business of the tariff' with no unalterable prede
termination as to the precise raode of effecting the grand ob
ject in view ; although I certainly hold a very confident opinion
that discrirainating and specific duties will be found indispen
sable. But this I ara ready to avow : that the protection of
American labor, on all its fields and in all its ,forms, is to be
kept constantly and anxiously in view in all our arrangements ;
that you have the constitutional power to secure that protec
tion ; and that you are bound to do so, regardless of every
thing and everybody but the Constitution, justice, and a true
and large American policy.
There can be no doubt then, it would seem, in the first
place, on the constitutional power of congress, in the assess
ment of duties of revenue, so to discriminate among objects
of duty as to bring to life and to keep alive the whole multi
form, agricultural, raanufacturing, and comraercial industry of
the country. To state the iraraediate proposition which I raean
to exaraine raore precisely : You are about determining to raise
a certain annual amount of revenue, — twenty-six millions of
dollars, if you please. The wants of government require at
least so rauch, whatever becoraes of the land bill. The amount
is fixed by reference to those wants. Now, without intending
by any means to concede that this is the extent of your consti
tutional power, — for certainly, in my judgment, it goes a
great deal further, — what I would say is, that, in assessing
the duties which are to yield the amount thus determined on,
you may discriminate for the protection of labor. You may
admit some articles free, and just as many of them as you
please, without any regard to the enumeration in the Compro
mise Act. You may prohibit the importation of others. You
may adrait sorae under specific, and sorae under' ad valorem
duties, — some under a low rate, and some under a high one,
— some under a foreign valuation, others under a valuation at
home, — and others, or all, under that legislative preestab-
lishraent of value which the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr.
Simmons] proposes to substitute for fraudulent or mistaken
estiraates of actual and changeable value made abroad or at
home. All this you may do ; these varieties of proceeding

ON PROTECTESTG AMERICAN LABOR.

75

you may choose between, with intent to bring out and sustain
the domestic labor of America against the capital, the necessi
ties, or the policy of foreigners, whether individuals or govern
ments. Upon the words of the Constitution, if it were an
open question to-day, this is clear. The history of the origin,
construction, and adoption of that instruraent deraonstrates it.
And, then, there is a weight of opinion, and a series of prac
tical interpretation, which should put the matter forever at
rest, Mr. President, the senate would hardly excuse me for as
suming to off'er a formal and laborious argument as an orig
inal one, in proof of this matter. Delicacy, honor, and good
sense would forbid such an attempt to appropriate borrowed
plumes. No raan's ability or research could clothe the subject
with any useful novelty ; how rauch less can raine ! I desire,
therefore, only to recall to your raind the general nature and
main points of an argument already and long ago farailiar to
you. And even this 1 should not venture on, if the state of
opinion in the country and in congress did not appear to
render such a discussion seasonable and useful. Sir, the
tendency of the tirae is to regard this protecting power as
stricken out of the Constitution. I have even heard judicious
men speak of it as an exploded thing. We reason, some
reason — certainly not the honorable mover of these resolu
tions — but some reason as if it had been agreed somewhere,
at sorae time, and by somebody or another, that the power
should never again be asserted, or never again be exercised.
They would persuade you that the people, nine years ago, to
secure to themselves the peaceable enjoyraent of their rights
for nine years longer, had stipulated that, at the end of the
time, they would surrender the principle of constitutional pro
tection forever. For a fleeting term of possession, — nothing
in the life of a nation ; nothing in the life of a raan, — they
agreed to squander away the inheritance itself !
Now, Sir, without pausing to inquire into the origin of this
opinion, without pausing to inquire how far it raay be attribu
table to the silent influence of the Compromise Act in unsettling
the tone of the public mind, still less to debate the merits of
that celebrated arrangement, or to judge between the sagacity,
patriotism, and firraness of those who suggested and those

'¦jlQ SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
who opposed it, I think it may not be unseasonable to ascend
from that act to the contemplation of first principles. Let us
turn from the stormy passions, and unconstitutional organiza
tions, and extorted expedients of 1833, and breathe the pure
and invigorating air of 1789 ! Let us see what our fathers
framed the governraent for, and what they expected of it.
I find your authority then. Sir, to pass laws of protection,
where the calm and capacious intelligence of Mr. Madison
found it in 1789, in 1810, and 1828. That great man,
among our greatest of the dead or the living ; who had helped
so much to frarae the Constitution and procure its adoption,
defending and expounding it with his tongue and pen to his
own Virginia, and to the whole country; who had weighed,
aye. Sir, and helped to coin and starap, every word in it ; and
who knew the evils, the wants, the hopes, the opinions in
which it had its origin, as well as any man ever knew why he
reraoved frora an old house to a new one ; Mr. Madison, in
1789 sustaining in congress that celebrated law laying irapost
duties for the support of government, the discharge of the
public debt, and the encouragement and protection of manu
factures, in 1810, in a message to congress, and in 1828, in
his letter to Mr. Cabell, — at the beginning, in the midst, and
at the close of his career ; first when his faculties were at their
best, his memory of events recent, his ambition high ; again
with the utmost weight of his official responsibilities upon
him ; and again in old age, when his passions were calmed, the
raeasure of his fame full, and he looked round upon the wide
spread tribes of the people whom he had served, and who had
honored him so long, and upon their diversities of interest and
of sentiment with a parental and patriarchal eye, -r— he found
your authority always in the Constitution, and he found it in
your "power to regulate coraraerce with foreign nations,
among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." Let
me read a passage from his speech in congress in 1789, upon
Mr, Fitzsiraons's proposition to corabine the objects of pro
tection and revenue in the bill laying duties on imports :  -
" The States that are most advanced in population, and ripe for manu
factures, ought to have their particalar interests attended to in some
degree. While these States retained the power of making regulations of
trade, they had the power to protect and cherish such institutions. By

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.

77

adopting the present Constitution, they have thrown the exercise of this
power into other hands ; they must have done this with an expectation
that those interests would not be neglected here." — James Madison,
Gales and Seaton' s Debates, old series, vol. i. p. 116.
In his message of the fifth of Deceraber, 1810, after advert
ing to a " highly interesting extension of useful manufactures,
the combined product of professional occupations and of house
hold industry," he observes, " how far it may be expedient to
guard the infancy of this iraprovement in the distribution of
labor, by regulations of the commercial tariff, is a subject
which cannot fail to suggest itself to your patriotic reflec
tions." His letter to Mr. Cabell, written in September, 1828,
in which he defines his opinions upon the power more pre
cisely, and produces a very strong argument in support of
them, is known to everybody. " The question is," he says,
" whether, under the Constitution of the United States, ' the
power to regulate trade with foreign nations,' as a distinct
and substantive item in the enuraerated powers, embraces the
object of encouraging, by duties, restrictions, and prohibitions,
the manufactures and products of the country '? And the
affirmative must be inferred from the following considera
tions ; " which he proceeds to unfold and urge with that force
of persuasive reason for which he was so remarkable.
I derive, then, your power to arrange duties, for the pur
pose of protection, from your power to regulate coraraerce.
The " Congress shall have power to regulate coraraerce with
foreign nations, and araong the several States, and with the
Indian tribes." What does this language raean ? How, and
by what means, does the Constitution authorize you to regu
late commerce, and /or what ends to regulate it ? The answer
is, it authorizes you to regulate it, araong other raeans, by the
imposition of discriminating duties, or prohibitory duties on
imports of foreign manufactures, or other articles, for the pur
pose, among other purposes, of encouraging domestic raanu
factures, and any and every other form of domestic industry.
The presumption, certainly, in the first instance is, that
these words of the Constitution mean to coraraunicate the
power to pass any law, to do any act, for any purpose, which,
in the general and political language of the country in 1787?
was deemed and called an ordinary and usual governmental
7*

ys SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
commercial regulation. You may regulate commerce. Then
you may do it by any and all such means, and for any and all
such ends, as formed at that time the known and usual means
and ends by and for which governments habitually regulated
commerce. If you cannot do it by all such means, and for all
such ends, you cannot by any, nor for any. All the known
and usual modes, and all the known and usual ends, are com
mitted to you; or none are so. This is the first and legal
import, primd facie, of so general a grant. The presumption
in the first instance is, that this language was used in the
sense which it was generally understood to bear when asserted
of or applied to other governments in other writings, or in the
current speech of the age of the Constitution. If, in the con
temporaneous written and spoken vocabulary, a " commercial
regulation " coraprised and meant a certain act, or certain
classes of acts, a certain act for a certain purpose ; if a law of
England, or of one of the States, laying duties on imports for
the encouragement of doraestic labor, mechanical, manufactur
ing, navigating, or agricultural, was, in that vocabulary, held
and called a comraon commercial regulation ; one of the rec
ognized and familiar exercises of the power to regulate com
merce; the presumption is, that the words here mean what
they meant everywhere else. If you can control this pre
sumption by inspection of other parts of the Constitution, or
of its general structure, or by other legitimate evidence, do
so ; but the burden will be on you. It was upon this pre
sumption that the discussion in this body, the other day, upon
the bankrupt law proceeded. To determine the nature and
limits of your power to pass such a law, you inquired what
bankruptcy meant, and what laws upon the subject of bank
ruptcy were, in the legal language of the time ? The senators
from Delaware, [Mr. Bayard,] and from Missouri, [Mr.
Benton,] who debated this subject so ably, in opposition to
the bill, did not argue that, from the nature of this govern
ment, the phrase " laws upon the subject of bankruptcy " must
be supposed to mean less or raore than the same phrase any
where else. They treated it as a question on the meaning of
language ; and, assuming that the words in the Constitution
meant what the sarae words meant elsewhere, they sought that
meaning in the contemporaneous, popular, and technical vo-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. <^Q
cabulary of the States, and of England. Just so here. To
determine the nature and limits of this power to regulate com
merce, to determine whether it enables you to construct a pro
tecting tariff', inquire whether in the political and popular
vocabulary of 1787 such a tariff was an ordinary form and
kind of comraercial regulation. If it were, the doubt is re
solved. And now is it not indisputable that, at that day, what we
now call a discriminating tariff for protection was universally
known and described as one familiar and recognized kind of
coraraercial regulation? and that a power of governraent to
regulate commerce was universally understood to include the
power to make such a tariff? Sir, nothing is more certain.
Nothing is more certain than that, by a concurrence of extraor
dinary circumstances, the expressions, commercial regulations,
regulations of trade, the power to regulate commerce, the power
to regulate trade, and the like, had acquired, in the political
and popular language ofthe day, a definite and uniform sense;
and that, according to that sense, a protecting tariff' was a form
of coraraercial regulation, and the power to regulate commerce
included the power to construct such a tariff'.
Go back, for a moment, in the first place, to the close of the
war in 1783, and inquire what this language meant then. No
other words, or combination of words, had so settled, so pre
cise, and so notorious a signification. You reraeraber how
this carae to pass. The discussions and the events of the
twenty years before had given them currency, and fixed their
meaning. They had been burned and graven, as it were, into
the memory of America. The disputes of England and her
colonies, which brought on the Revolution, had turned on the
extent of her power over them. She asserted in 1764 an
enlarged and a menacing extent of claim ; a claim not only to
regulate their trade, but to lay internal and external taxes, and
to bind them in all cases whatsoever. They admitted the right
to regulate trade; they admitted the right to do it by the
imposition of duties on imports into the colonies, and on their
imports into England ; they admitted the right to do it for the
purpose of developing and sustaining the manufacturing, me
chanical, and navigating industry of the mother-country ; but
they denied the right, for the first time asserted in the Stamp

80 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Act, to lay internal taxes. She asserted both rights ; and from
this conflict of the exactions of dominion and the resistance of
liberty, arose the discussions which preceded the war, and the
war itself. Now, what I ask you particularly to remark is,
that, in all the stages and in all the forms of this controversy ;
a controversy extending over twenty years ; a controversy
which addressed the reason and exasperated the feelings of all
America, and made everybody familiar with its topics and its
vocabulary, — all the disputants on both sides agreed exactly on
the nature of a commercial regulation, and of the acts which,
might be done under the power to make such a regulation.
Grenville, Lord North, Lord Chatham, and Burke, in Eng
land ; and in the colonies, John Dickinson the Pennsylvania
farmer, Benjamin Franklin the Boston mechanic, John Adams
the Massachusetts lawyer, whose energy and eloquence brought
up a hesitating congress to the Declaration of Independence,
Sewall, the champion of parliament and the crown, Jefi'erson,
who first denied the right of England to exert either of the
powers she clairaed — these and a hundred others, some of
whose names we know, while some have perished — stant
nominum umbrce I — all who took part for you or against you
in that, your " agony of glory," concur in this. All of them
agreed that the long series of legislation by which England
had laid duties on iraports of the colonies, for the purpose of
bringing out and sustaining her doraestic industry of all kinds,
were regulations of trade ; all of them agreed that, if she had
power to regulate the trade of the colonies, her protecting
tariffs were clearly within the exercise of the power ; and all
of them at first, and most of them, even on the American side,
down nearly to the Declaration of Independence, conceded to
her that precise power. Taking their stand upon the nature
of this power, and of the acts it authorized, those who sus
tained the claim of England argued that her right to lay inter
nal taxes followed of course, while those who espoused the
cause of liberty denied that it followed at all ; but upon the
nature of that power, and of the acts it authorized, if it ex
isted, there was no diversity of opinion, and there was nearly
a unanimous concession that it did exist. Every speech, every
address, every public act, every essay, every pamphlet, Lu the
written remains of that anxious and momentous controversy.

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 81
which employed so many eloquent tongues and pens, and went,
at last, to the arbitrament of war, prove this. It is wholly
indisputable that if, in the year 1783, it were written or said
that England, before the Revolution, and the States after it,
had the power to regulate the trade of America, the writer or
speaker meant to declare that England first, and subsequently
the States, had the power, among other things, to tax imports
in order to protect manufactures, the arts, navigation, and
agriculture ; and that he was understood to mean so by all
England and all America.
Mr. President, I could not exhibit in a day all the evidence
of this which breaks forth from every page of our Revolutionary
and ante-Revolutionary political literature. You know how
considerable a body of writing it is. It is familiar to the
earlier and the maturer studies of senators. You have not
been inattentive to a class of compositions, some of which the
masculine taste of Chatham did not refuse to rank with the
best political writings of the master States of antiquity.
Let me read a few selections, however, in proof and illus
tration of the currency and the meaning of this language prior
and down to 1783. Sorae of thera, I know, have been ac
cumulated and arranged for this purpose by others ; and,
indeed, the principle of this whole mode of argument, and
the nature of the investigations by which it should be con
ducted, are suggested by Mr. Madison's letter. But I have
not thought it proper to orait any for this reason ; and some
of them, I think, have not been adverted to at all.
In an anonymous pamphlet, published as early as August,
1765, entitled " Considerations on the propriety of imposing
taxes in the British colonies, for the purpose of raising a
revenue, by act of Parliament," of which I know only that it
was one of the numerous and eff'ective contributions of Vir
ginia to the cause of colonial liberty, the Writer, (page 83,)
says : —
" It appears to me that there is a clear and necessary distinction be
tween an act imposing a tax for the single purpose of revenue, and those
acts which have been made /or the regulation of trade, and have produced
some revenue in consequence of their effect and operation as regulations
of trade." And again, (page 34) : " It is a coramon, and frequently the
most proper method, to regulate trade by duties on imports and exports.
The authority of the mother-country to regulate the trade of the colonies

82 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
being unquestionable, what regulations are the most proper are to be of
course submitted to the determination of the Parliament ; and, if an in
cidental revenue should be produced by such regulations, these are not,
therefore, unwarrantable."
I ought to have reminded you that before this, in 1761,
even James Otis, in that great argument upon the subject of
writs of assistance which breathed (I may use the vivid ex
pression of John Adams) " the breath of life into America,"
adraitted, upon the ground of necessity, the power of England
to pass her whole series of acts of trade "as regulations of
commerce," while he utterly denied their validity as laws of
revenue. Let me refer you to the glowing and reraarkable
analysis of that arguraent, contained in the letters of Mr.
Adaras to Mr. Tudor, written in 1818.
In October, 1765, the first congress of the colonies assem
bled at New York to confer on the means of preserving the
liberties of America, menaced by that new system of imperial
policy of which the Stamp Act was the most palpable, most
alarming, but not the only manifestation. Of the proceedings
of this congress we know little. Tradition has preserved
soraething of the impression which the genius and eloquence
of Jaraes Otis, and his profound knowledge of the interests,
and his deep comprehension of the rights and unappeasable
resentment for the wrongs of the colonies, produced on the
assembly ; but his words of fire are perished forever. There
survive, however, of the labors of that body, a general declara
tion of rights, an address to the king, a petition to each
house of parliament, and a report of a comraittee on the
subject of the colonial rights. I read you a sentence frora the
address to the king, which is repeated, alraost in the very
sarae words, in the report of the committee. You may find
it in Pitkins's " Civil and Political History," first volume,
pages 185 and 4>53.
_ " It is also humbly submitted whether there be not a raaterial distinc
tion, in reason and sound policy at least, between the necessary exercises
of pariiamentary jurisdiction in general acts, for the amendment of the
common law, and the regulation of trade and commerce throu<fh the whole
empire, and the exercise of that jurisdiction by imposing 'taxes on tlie
colonies." In February, I766, Dr. Franklin underwent his celebrated

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 83
examination " before an august asserably," as the colonial
writers of the day called the house of coraraons ; and to the
question " was it an opinion of Araerica, before 1763, that
parliaraent had no right to lay duties and taxes there 1 " he
answered, " I never heard an objection to th6 right to lay
duties to regulate coraraerce." See how fully this is con
firmed by John Dickinson, in the second of the " Farmer's
Letters," written in 1767 : —
" The Parliament," he observes, (page 4,) " unquestionably possesses a
legal authority to regulate the trade of Great Britain and all her colonies.
Such an authority is essential to the relation of a mother-country and her
colonies, and necessary for the common good of all."
He then adverts to the legislation of England for the colo
nies before the Stamp Act, makes extracts from the several
statutes, beginning with 12 Car. IL, and then adds : —
" All before the Stamp Act are calculated to regulate trade, although
many of them imposed duties on it." " Great Britain," he proceeds in
the same letter, (page 9,) " has prohibited the manufacturing iron and steel
in these colonies without any objection being made to her right of doing
it. The like right she must have to prohibit any other manufacture
among us. Our great advocate, ^r. Pitt, in his speeches on the debate
concerning the repeal of the Stamp Act, acknowledged that Great Britain
could restrain our manufactures. His words are these : ' This kingdom,'
as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound the
colonies by her regulations and restrictions in trade, in navigation, in
manufactures — in everything, except that of taking their money out of
their pockets without their consent.' Again he says : ' We may bind their
trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatever,
except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their con
sent.' " " External impositions, (this is Mr. Dickinson's language, letter
4, page 17,) for the regulation of our trade, do not grant to his Majesty
the property of his colonies."
" There is a plain distinction," Lord Chatham had said the
year before, in one of those glorious efforts of his eloquence
which so much endeared him to our fathers, and stirred their
hearts like the sound of a trumpet — " there is a plain distinc
tion between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue
and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, although sorae
revenue might arise from the latter." We may regulate
trade, — such was his argument, — we may regulate it by the
imposition of duties ; we may do it for the purpose of giving

84 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
direction and development to the whole industry of the empire.
But we cannot levy an internal tax for revenue.
Burke, whose long series of exertions for the rights of the
colonies do him as much honor as the marvellous affluence of
his genius, proceeds everywhere upon the same distinction,
and uses everjrwhere the same language. " Without idolizing
the trade laws," he says, in his speech on conciliation with
America in 177-55 " I am sure they are still, in many ways,
of great use to us. But my perfect conviction of this does
not help me in the least to discern how the revenue laws form
any security whatsoever to the commercial regulations, or that
these commercial regulations are the true ground of quarrel."
Aud the year before, in his speech on American taxation:
" This is certainly true, that no act avowedly for tbe purpose
of revenue, and with the ordinary title and recital, taken
together, is found in the statute book till the year 1764, All
before this period stood on commercial regulation and re
straint." Nearly at the same tirae the congress which declared our in
dependence, in a grave and lofty paper, in which they claimed
for the colonies " the free and exclusive power in all cases of
taxation and internal policy," avowed nevertheless, —
" That, from the necessity of the case, we cheerfully consent to the
operation of such acts of the British Parliament as are bond fide re
strained to the regulation of commerce for the purpose of securing the
commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother-country, and
the commercial benefits of its respected members, excluding every idea
of taxation for raising a revenue on the subjects of America without their
consent." In 1774 and 177"5, John Adams, in a series of papers, un
der the signature of Novanglus, vindicated the cause of Amer
ican liberty against the king's attorney-general, Sewall, w^ith
a vigor and ability which gave assurance of the future cham
pion of independence. These papers and those of his an
tagonist discussed all the points of controversy between Eng
land and her colonies, and reviewed the whole history of their
original and their altered relations ; and, exasperated and
soured as the colonists had become, clearly and far as the eagle
glance of the orator of independence already saw into the
future, it is remarkable that then, even almost down to the

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 85
battle of Lexington, this distinction was still recognized and
respected and reasoned on.
" And from that time to this, (i. e. for more than a hundred years,) the
ge"neral sense of the colonies has been, that the authority of parliament
was confined to the regulation of trade, and did not extend to taxation or
internal legislation." " Duties for regulating trade we paid because we
thought it just," &c. "As for duties for a revenue, none were ever laid
by parliament for that purpose until 1764, when, and ever since, its au
thority to do it has been constantly denied." — Letters of Novanglus and
Massachusettensis, pp. 38, 39. Feb. 13th, 1775.
The ministry at length perceived the expediency of admit
ting the justice of a distinction with which England and Amer
ica had becorae so familiar. In 1778 Lord North, aroused to
the realities of his situation, and seeking to win the insurgent
colonies from independence and frora France, procured the
passage of a bill which off'ered a corapromise upon the pre
cise basis for which they had so long contended. " It is ex
pedient," such was the language of the bill, " to declare that
the King and Parliaraent of Great Britain will not irapose any
duty or tax for the purpose of raising a revenue in the colonies,
except only such duties as may be expedient to impose for the
regulation of commerce." (St. 18, Geo. III.) But, in the phrase
of Paine, " the charm had been broken," and the tardy offer of
conciliation was unheard, or distrusted, or distasteful,. amid the
voice of battle, by the hoarded up resentments of a whole peo
ple, to the spirit of liberty and to the passion of glory.
And now, what kind of regulations were those which the
colonies so long and so universally conceded to England the
right to make ? Sir, they were, among others, what, in the
language of this day, we call discriminating and protecting
tariff's. They were laws imposing duties on iraports, as you
see by the passages I have selected, and iraposing thera for
the purpose of encouraging the navigation and trade, and de
veloping the raanufacturing capacity and labor, that had seated
England on the throne of the commercial world. "One thing
at least is certain." says Mr. Madison in his letter to Mr. Ca
bell, " that the main and admitted object of the parliamentary
regulations of trade with the colonies was the encouragement
of the manufactures in Great Britain." They were designed,
among other objects, expressly to secure to the English manu-
VOL. II. 8

86 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
facturer the home market and' the colonial market for his fab
rics, and the colonial supply of his ratv materials, against the
competition which might reduce the price of the former and
enhance the price of the latter. Other and broader objects
they pursued, undoubtedly ; but, for the purposes of this dis
cussion, I speak only of this. For the accompUshment of this
object they restrained, by heavy duties or by direct prohibition,
the importation of foreign manufactures into the colonies ; they
discouraged the colonial manufacturers themselves ; and they
obliged them to send, in English ships, to English markets,
and to English markets alone, the raw material, which Eng
lish genius was to transfigure and refine into shapes of beauty
and usefulness, to enrich and swell her commerce with the
world. Read the titles and objects of that long succession of
laws, in the argument of James Otis, to which I have alluded,
and his burning comraentary on them, and you will well com
prehend the extent and energy of English governmental regu
lation. Read particularly pages 213 and 294i of the letters
of Novanglus and Massachusettensis, and Pitkins's " Political
and Civil History of the United States," first volume, page
401. Read the celebrated preamble of the act of navigation
itself: —
" In regard his Majesty's plantations beyond the seas are inhabited
and peopled by his subjects of this his kingdom oi England, for the main
taining a greater correspondence and kindness between them, and keeping
them in a firmer dependence upon it, and rendering them yet more ben
eficial and advantageous unto it in the further employment and increase of
English shipping and seamen, vent of Eiglish woollens, and other manu
factures and commodities, rendering the navigation to and from the same
more safe and cheap, and making this kingdom a staple, not only of the
commodities of those plantations, but also of the commodities of other
countries and places, for the supplying of them ; and it being the usage
of other nations to keep plantations trade to themselves," &c.
Upon the policy here so vigorously sketched, that whole
series of regulations of trade reposed. They may all be
summed up under the terras of this description; that they
were a body of English law, designed by the regulation of the
commerce of England and her colonies with each other, and
the rest of the world, to develop, to its utmost capacity, the
labor of the British erapire, in all its forms, according to the
discretion of the imperial parliament.

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.

87

I hold it then. Sir, clear aud indisputable, that, down to the
close of the war with England in 1783, the phrase " commer
cial regulations," in the understanding of everybody, included
discriminating protecting tariffs ; and that when it was said
that, before the Revolution, England had the power to regu
late commerce, and that, after the declaration of independence,
the States had it, it was raeant, in the understanding of every
body, that she first, and then they, could make such tariff's.
So much is certain.
And now, when you consider that the Constitution was
made only four years later ; that it was made by and for the
generation which had gone through the war and the whole
preparatory controversy ; that many of those who shared in
that controversy, and were most familiar with its topics and
its terms, were still alive, in the Convention, or mingling- with
the people ; the presuraption undoubtedly is, that this language
continued to bear the same sense down to the date of the Con
stitution, and that it raeans in that iraraortal production just
what it raeans in all the other written and spoken speech
of the day. But I do not leave this upon what I should
have deeraed a resistless presumption. To show you that
such was the fact, that its meaning remained unaltered to
1787j and that it was inserted into the Constitution precisely
because that was its meaning, I proceed now to lay before
you another kind of evidence, and, as I think, a conclusive
body of it.
It is not wholly unworthy of remark, that that which I may
call the colonial, controversial, and technical use of this lan
guage, — that use of it which I have been illustrating, — was
exactly in conformity with its literary, general, and popular
use. Mr. Verplanck observes, in his letter to Colonel Drayton,
that Adam Smith calls those restrictive tariffs to which he ob
jects comraercial regulations. This is true. He sets the sys
tera of free trade and that of comraercial restraint in contrast;
and that whole body of prohibitions, taxations, and general
policy, designed to foster domestic labor, he assails under the
narae of " commercial regulations." And as his work was
first published in 1779, it raay be presuraed, and indeed is
known, to have begun to attract the notice of intelligent per
sons as early as the period iraraediately after the war, and thus

88 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
to have contributed to diffuse, impress, and define the sense of
the language we are considering.
It is a fact, which bears still more directly upon the point
of inquiry to which I have arrived, that after the war several
of the States imposed duties, more or less heavy, on imports
of foreign manufactures, avowedly for the purpose of sustain
ing their own manufactures, and that these tariffs were cora
raonly called, in the language of our politics between 1783
and 1789, commercial regidations. Massachusetts, New York,
Pennsylvania, and I believe other States, had done this. " It is
happy for the raechanics in Araerica," (says a writer of Mary
land, at sorae tirae between 1783 and 1787, " American Mu-
seura," first volurae, page 215,) " that they have met with the
protection and encouragement of governraent in several of the
wisest States." I cannot resist the pleasure of referring to the
act of the State of Pennsylvania on this subject, passed in
1785, and of marking the good sense and the forecast which
it exemplifies. It recites that divers useful arts and raanu
factures had been gradually introduced into that State, which
had been able, during the war, to supply in the hour of need
weapons, araraunition, and clothing, without which the war
could not have been carried on ; and then proceeds in sec
tion two : —
" And whereas, although the fabrics and manufactures of Europe and
other foreign ports, imported into this country in times of peace, may be
afforded at cheaper rates than they can be made here, yet good policy
and a regard to the well-being of divers useful and industrious citizens,
who were employed in the making of like goods in this State, demand of
us that moderate duties be laid on certain fabrics and manufactures im
ported, which do not interfere with, and which (if no relief be given) will
undermine and destroy, the useful manufactures of the like kind in this
country." A writer in the " Araerican Museum," on American manu
factures, to whora I will refer you raore particularly before I
have done, at some time before 1787, warmly commends the
noble example of Massachusetts in this particular. (Am. Mus.
first volurae, page 23.) Now, these impositions of duties, for this
purpose, by the States, all impositions of duties on imports of
the States were called commercial regulations by our writers
and speakers of the period after the Revolution and before the

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 89
Constitution. " While the States," said Mr. Madison in the
debate in 1789, to which I have referred, " retained the power
of making regulations of trade," (referring palpably to these
legislative taxations on imports,) " they had the power to pro
tect and cherish manufactures." They were denominated com
mercial acts, trade laws, and regulations of commerce, indif
ferently and universally, in the current language of the tirae.
Tench Coxe, in an inquiry into the principle of a commercial
system for the United States, written before the adoption of the
Constitution, describes and complains of them under all those
appellations. (Am. Mus., first volume, 444.) I suppose it out
of all doubt that if, at that time, it had been written or said
that the States had the power to regulate commerce, as very
frequently in those very words it was written and said, every
body would have understood it to be meant that this included,
as one of its commonest exemplifications and exertions, a power
to make a protecting tariff". When that precise form of speech
was then embodied into the Constitution, did it not mean the
same thing ?
But, to put this matter at rest, let me ask you to look a
little more at large into that considerable body of writings
which appeared in the States, between the peace of 1783 and
the adoption of the Constitution, upon the subject of a new
Constitution. A word first on their general character.
You know how soon after the war an opinion began to pre
vail that the country needed a stronger government. Sug
gested at first, like the Revolution itself, by the intelligence of
the coraraunity, it spread fast and far ; the events of every day
gave it diffusion and strength ; it possessed itself at last of the
general mind, and the Constitution was the result. During
the progress of this opinion, it produced a great deal of
discussion. These writings, into which I wish you now to
look, are the fruits of that discussion, and embody its topics
and its language. Less known than the more lofty and clas
sical controversial literature of the raore glorious revolutionary
and ante-revolutionary time, they are to us the most interest
ing and most instructive writings in the world. No man, I
could almost say, can understand the Constitution without the
study of them. No man can understand the nature of the
new remedial law until he has meditated the disease which
8*

90 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
it was made to cure, in these vivid pictures of it. No man
Can understand the vocabulary of the Constitution until he has
familiarized himself, in these writings, with the current vo
cabulary of the people, by whom and for whora it was com
posed. The defects of the old confederation ; its utter insuf
ficiency for our greatness and our glory ; the evils which
bore the people to the earth, and made their newly acquired
independence a dreary and useless thing ; the disordered con
dition of the currency ; our exhausting system of trade ; the
action of conflicting and inadequate comraercial regulations of
the States ; the excessive iraportations of foreign manufac
tures ; the drain of specie ; the stagnation of labor, oppressed
and disheartened by a corapetition with all the pauper labor
of all the world ; the depression of agriculture, sympathizing
with other labor by an eternal law ; the need of a systera of
divided and diversified employments, which should leave no
one over-crowded, should leave no man's faculties undeveloped
and unexcited, which should give a market and a reward to
all industry ; the wants, sufferings, fears, wishes ; the universal
stimulation of raind and ferraentation of opinions in which the
Constitution had its birth — you find thera all there, and you
find them nowhere else.
Looking with some labor into a collection of part of these
writings in the " Araerican Museura," a work embodying the
general spirit of the press from 1783 to 1787, I think I find
conclusive evidence of this fact, to wit : that a confident
and sagacious and salutary conviction came to be generally
adopted ; First. That one capital source of the evils which op
pressed us was the importation of too many foreign manufac
tures, and the use of too few doraestic manufactures ; too rauch
encouragement of the foreign laborer, , and too little encour
agement of our own ; Secondly. That a new and more perfect
union and a stronger government were required, among other
ends, very rauch for the cure and prevention of this precise
evil ; and Thirdly. That, in order to effect this end, the new gov
ernraent must be clothed with this specific power of regulating
trade, whereby it could check the import of foreign manufac
tures, by duties and prohibitions, and thus bring to life and
keep alive domestic raanufactures, and with them the entire
labor of America. If this is so, it will prove at once, first.

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.
that this language retained the same significatioA-ip 17^
which it had borne in 1764 ; and, next, that it rae%i)|>in
Constitution just what it meant everywhere else,
inserted there because it bore that meaning. Let me asle your
attention, then, to sorae evidence and illustrations of the fact, to
which I might add a thousand.
In the first volume of the collection I have referred to is an
article on Araerican raanufactures. It is continued through
three raonths of the " Museum," and was written in Maryland
at some time after 1783, and before 1787- The proposition
which the essayist maintains is, that manufactures ought im
mediately to be established in the United States. In support
"of this, he reasons forcibly and zealously, and with rauch ma
turity and breadth of view, considering the time when he
wrote ; presents a vivid exhibition of the uses of manufactures
and of manufacturing industry ; of the rank they hold in all
civilized States ; of the division of labor which they ' render
practicable, and the influence of that division in stiraulating
all the faculties of raen and nations, and in supplying to each
faculty and each mind its favorite employment and adequate
reward ; and, above all, he urges the actual evils which were
weighing the country down ; its foreign debt ; its ruinous con
suraption ; its expensive tastes ; its incomplete development of
industry ; its deficiency in .the raeans of self-reliance and self-
support and self-regulation, as a decisive arguraent for his
purpose. He goes on then to inquire how raanufactures raay
be introduced and sustained ; and his scherae is, a government
which should have power to regulate trade, and in the exercise
of that power should, among other expedients, impose duties on
imports of articles coming in competition with the domestic
labor. " I am convinced," he says, (page 212,) " that to begin
at this juncture the establishraent of raanufactures will be the
only way to lay the foundation for the future glory, greatness,
and independence of America." " Well, how, then," he asks,
" shall we make tbe beginning ? " " Free trade," he argues,
" in our situation, adopting the sentiment of Montesquieu,
'must necessarily lead us to poverty.'" "A State whose
balance of trade is always to its disadvantage cannot grow
rich." We must have regulated trade, then. " But, we are
told by some," he proceeds, " that trade will regulate itself."

92 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Hear how he combats this proposition, and what is the pre
cise regulation of trade which he urges upon the statesmen
of America: —
" If trade will regulate itself, why do the wisest and most prosperous
governments make laws in favor and support of their trade ? Why does
the British Parliament employ so much time and pains in regulating their
trade, so as to render its advantages particularly useful to their own na
tion ? Why so preposterous as to abide by and enforce their boasted nav
igation act ? But so far is trade from regulating itself, that it continually
needs the help of the legislation of every country, as a nursing father. If
we Americans do not choose to regulate it, it will regulate us, till we have
not a farthing left in our land. Trade, like a helpless infant, requires
parental care, and to be well looked after ; for, says the same excellent
author : ' A country that constantly exports fewer manufactures or com
modities than it receives will soon find the balance sinking ; it will receive
less and less, till, falling into extreme poverty, it will receive nothing at
all.' The truth is, trade regulates or corrects itself just as everything
else does that is left to itself. The manner the late war, for instance,
would have corrected itself, had we supinely sat still and folded our arms
together, would have been such a correction as I hope no person who
makes use of this flimsy argument would wish to have taken place ; and
unless we shortly regtdate and correct the abuses of our trade hy lopping off
its useless branches and establishitig manufactures, we shall be corrected
perhaps even to our very destruction."
" The mechanics," he continues, " hope the legislature will afford them
that protection they are entitled to ; for, as the present baleful system of
trade and scarcity of cash occasion numbers of them to want employment,
though they are able and ready to furnish many articles which are at pres
ent imported, and as many of their branches are fast declining, and some
are likely to become totally extinct, they conceive that duties ought to be
laid on certain imported articles in such a manner as to place the Ameri
can manufacturers on the same footing as the manufacturers of Europe,
and enable them to procure bread and support for their families." And
then, in further explanation, he adds, " An excessive duty might be only
an encouragement to the smuggler ; on the other hand, let them be only
so high as to enable the manufacturer to procure a decent subsistence for
his family."
Mark two things in this argument and these extracts : the
advice to encourage domestic manufacture by duties on foreign
manufacture, and the use of language which calls such an im
post, for such an object, a regulation of trade.
I should never have done. Sir, if I attempted to read all the
proofs vvhich I find in these papers, that the importance of
estabhshing American manufactures seems, even then, to have
been generally apprehended ; and that a powerful and an im
mediate impulse was expected to be given to them, in some

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 93
way, by the new Constitution. The concurrence of opinion
upon that point is marvellous. It is still more marvellous, the
maturity of the public judgment upon the nature and uses of
raanufacturing industry, and the very considerable extent to
which that industry already had taken root, when you consider
with what severity the austere and long dominion of England
had pressed upon it ; and how short and how unpropitious the
time had been for the arts of peace to grow, after that do
rainion had passed away. But I must confine rayself closely
to selections which illustrate the raeaning and objects of the
constitutional phraseology. Let rae, however, read a passage
or two frora a series of letters, by a North Carolinian, under
the signature of Sylvius. I find thera in the second volurae of
the "Museura," page 107, and they appeared in August, 1787-
His cure, too, for the oppressive indebtraent, depreciated cur
rency, scarcity of money, exhausting importations, and, what
he calls, luxurious appetites of the day, is the encouragement
of American manufactures, and the substitution of a tax on
imported manufactures for all other modes of taxation.
" The more I consider " (says he, page 108) " the progress of credit and
the increase of wealth in foreign nations, the more fully I am convinced
that paper-money must prove hurtful to this country ; that we cannot be
relieved from our debts except by promoting domestic manufactures ; and
that during the prevailing scarcity of money the burdens of the poor may
be relieved by altering the mode of taxation."
Addressing himself to the second of these propositions, he
adverts to the appalling enlargement of the foreign debt since
the peace ; to the fact that it has been contracted for clothing ;
clothing for the master ; clothing for the slave ; furniture ;
" saws, hararaers, hoes, and axes, as if," says he, " the wolf
had made war against our iron as well as our sheep ; " Irish
butter and beef, and British ale, porter, and cheese, " as if our
country did not produce barley, hops, or black cattle ; " hazle
and oak sprouts under the name of " walking sticks ; " luxu
ries of all denominations, swelling it in three years to six mil
lions of dollars ; and then exclaims, —
" Let us turn our attention to manufactures, and the staple of our
country will soon rise to its proper value, for we have already glutted
every foreign market. By this expedient, instead of using fictitious pa
per, we shall soon obtain hard money suflScient ; instead of toiling in the

94 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
field, and becoming poor, that we may enrich the manufacturers of other
countries, we shall prosper by our own labor, and enrich our own citi
zens." " Every domestic manufacture is cheaper than a foreign one, for
this plain reason : by the first, nothing is lost to the country — by the
other, the whole value is lost ; it is carried away, never to return. It is
perfectly indifferent to this State or to the United States, what may be
the price of domestic manufactures, because that price remains in the
country." He proceeds then to recommend a substitution of an excise
on foreign manufactures sold in the State, for other modes of
taxation ; and, although I do not find here an illustration of
the tneaning of the words which I am investigating, you will
be struck with the confidence with which he presses the grand
elementary suggestion of a tax on foreign labor for the en
couragement of home labor.
"All wise governments " (such is his argument, page 124) " have thought
it their duty, on special occasions, to offer bounties for the encouragement
of dqmestic raanufactures ; but an excise on foreign goods must operate
as a bounty." " I have said that an excise is more favorable to the poor
than a land or poll tax. I will venture an additional sentiment : there
never was a government in which an excise could be of so much use as
in the United States of America. In all other countries, taxes are con
sidered as grievances. In the United States, an excise on foreign goods
would not be a grievance : like medicine to a sick man, it would give us
strength ; it would close that wasteful drain by which our honor and our
wealth are consumed. What, though money was not wanted — though
we did not owe a florin to any foreign nation — though we had no do
mestic debt — and though the expenses of civil government could be
supported for many years without a tax, still it may be questioned whether
an excise would not be desirable. It would certainly be the best ex
pedient for promoting domestic manufactures ; and the condition in which
we now live, our general dependence on a foreign country for arms and
clothing, is dishonorable — it is extremely dangerous."
" It is the duty of the statesman either to check or to promote the
several streams of commerce by taxes or bounties, so as to render them
profitable to the nation. Thus it happened in Massachusetts. A tax of
twenty-five per cent, was lately imposed on nails, and the poor of Taun
ton were immediately returned to life and vigor."
" If any man has doubts concerning the effect of large taxes on foreign
manufactures, he should turn his eyes to the Eastern States. Tbe me
chanic is generally the first who perceives the effects of a pernicious
commerce ; for the support of his family depends on his daily labor."
" Hence it is that the merchant may be profited by a particular branch
of commerce, and may promote it diligently, while his country is sinkincr
into a deadly consumption." °
You have heard the early and the mature good sense of North

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 95
Carolina. Listen to a sentence or two from an essay, " on the
advantages of trade and commerce," written at Charleston in
South Carolina, in 1786, and consider what inferences it
suggests upon the general subject ofthe public opinion of. that
eventful day. It is signed " American," and breathes the very
spirit of coraraercial, political, and industrial union ; of union
for defence against the arts as well as the arras of the world.
" There are but two ways to national wealth," (he begins,)
"conquest and the encouraging of agriculture, raanufactures,
and coraraerce." This he illustrates historically. England at
first was poor ; " but as soon as the spirit of manufacturing
raised its head, and commerce was regulated by good laws,"
(is it not palpable that he raeans the protecting tariff, behind
which that intellectual industry has so splendidly developed
itself?) "they rose superior to every obstacle." ("American
Museum," second volume, pages 328 and 329).
" It is in vain " (he continues, page 330) " for any people to attempt to
be rich, or have a suflftcient circulating specie among them, whose imports
exceed their exports ; the hand of the manufacturer in a distant land
seems to act upon gold and silver as the loadstone does on the needle."
Again, after adverting to a revenue of three millions and a
half raised by England, and by monopolizing our trade, he
proceeds (page 331) : —
" A great part of this may be saved to these States by our becoming
our own merchants and carriers ; and a great part of the remaining sum
may be saved in a few years by encouraging our own manufactors ; and
even this encouragement will be of service to our revenues — I mean
laying a duty on our imports, and giving a small part in bounties to our
own tradesmen."
By tradesmen he means mechanics. And to the suggestion
to turn planters into manufacturers, he answers : —
" I by no means wish it. I only wish to encourage European trades
men to come to reside here. I wish to see as much as possible exported,
and as little imported. The planters that buy the manufactures of Amer
ica stop so much money in this country, which must return again to the
planters' hands as long as traders eat."
Duties of encourageraent, let me observe in passing, he calls
" restrictions on the British trade."
I must hurry away from the accumulations of proof be-

96 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
fore rae, which bear on the general subject; the formation of
associations to encourage manufactures, the resolutions of the
patriotic society of Richmond, of the ladies of Halifax in North
Carolina, and of Hartford in Connecticut, and of the legisla
ture and executive of Massachusetts to eff'ect this by individual
and organized exertion, and all the other indications which
break from the universal press of that stirring and anxious
tirae, and which show you with how true an instinct the genius
of America was turning itself to take hold on the golden key
that opens the palace of national wealth and greatness ; I must
hurry from these to call your attention to sorae others more
immediately applicable to the proposition which I am main
taining. Look, then, for a moment, into an address by a
" Jerseyman," in November, 1787, to the citizens of New
Jersey, on the new Constitution. Hear hira, one of the peo
ple, appealing to the people with the open book in his hand,
speaking the language of the people, — hear him on the clause
which you are attempting to interpret : —
" The great advantages," (" Amer. Mus.," second volume, page 437,)
" which would be the result ofthe adoption ofthe proposed Constitution, are
almost innumerable. I will mention a few among the many. In the first
place, the proper regulation of our commerce would be insured, — the im
posts on all foreign merchandise imported into America would still effect
ually aid our continental treasury. This power has been heretofore held
back by some States on narrow and mistaken principles. The amount of
the duties since the peace would probably, by this time, have nearly paid
pur national debt. By the proper regulation of our commerce our own
manufactures would be also much promoted and encouraged. Heavy du
ties would discourage the consumption of articles of foreign growth. This
would induce us more to work up our raw materials, and prevent Eu
ropean manufacturers from dragging them frora us, in order to bestow
upon them their own labor and a high price before they are returned into
our hands."
Just then, too, a Pennsylvania patriot, under the signature
of " One of the People," was raaking a sirailar appeal to the
intelligence of that great State on behalf of the new Constitu
tion. And how does he interpret this grant of power ?
" The people of Pennsylvania, in general, are composed of men of
three occupations, — the farmer, the merchant, the mechanic. The inter
ests of these three are intimately blended together. A governraent, then,
which will be conducive to their happiness, and best proraote their inter-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 97
est, is the government which these people should adopt. The Constitu
tion now presented to them is such a one. Every person must long since
have discovered the necessity of placing the exclusive power of regulating
the commerce of America in the same body ; without this it is impossible
to regulate their trade. The same imposts, duties, and customs, must
equally prevail over the whole, for no one State can carry into effect its
impost laws. A neighboring State could always prevent it. No State ,
could effectuaUy encourage its manufactories — there can be no naviga
tion act. Whence comes it that the trade of this State, which abounds
with materials for ship-building, is carried on in foreign bottoms ? Whence
comes it that shoes, boots, made-up clothes, hats, nails, sheet-iron, hinges,
and all other utensils of iron, are of British manufacture ? Whence
comes it that Spain can regulate our flour market ? These evils proceed
from a want of one supreme controlling power in these States. They
will be all done away by adopting the present form of government. It
will have energy and power to regulate your trade and commerce — to
enforce the execution of your imposts, duties, and customs. Instead of
the trade of this country being carried on in foreign bottoms, our ports
will be crowded with our own ships, and we shall become the carriers of
Europe. Heavy duties will he laid on all foreign articles which can he
manufactured in this country, and bounties will be granted on the expor
tation of our commodities ; the manufactories of our country will fiourish ;
our mechanics will lift up their heads, and rise to opulence and wealth."
And a little after this, in July, I788, I find a " Bosto
nian " (Am. Mus,, 4th vol., 331st page) advising duties on
English importations, under the name of regulations and re
strictions of trade for the encouragement of our own raanu
factures. " The ill policy of our commercial arrangements has served to im
poverish us in our finances, by the enormous remittances of our currency,
occasioned an almost general bankruptcy, and has had the pernicious ten
dency to discourage our enterprise in manufactures, and ruined many of
those branches which, during the war, had arisen to a flourishing state."
" Our trade with that nation has been the principal source of all our mis
fortunes. It has thrown a number of our best estates into the hands of
British merchants, has occasioned a most rapid decrease of our medium,
has ruined our manufactures, and will, if pursued, sap the foundation of
the best govemment that ever can be established in America. The first
object, therefore, of the federal government must be to restrain our con
nection with Great Britain, unless on terms of reciprocity. While they
continue their duties and prohibitions, we must lay similar restrictions
and embarrassments on their trade, and prevent, by excessive duties, the
redundance of their manufactures''
Some time in the year 1783 or 1784, there were pubhshed
in a Virginia newspaper, " Reflections on the policy and ne
cessity of encouraging the commerce of the citizens of the
VOL. II. 9

98 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
United States," by St. George Tucker, of Petersburg. They
are written with great vigor, good sense, and a true national
spirit, and present a powerful argument for a discrimination in
favor of American tonnage. Towards the close of the essay,
(page 274 of the 2d vol. of the Am. Mus.,) he adverts to an-'
other subject, in the following terms : —
" Before I conclude, let me call the attention of my reader for a
moment to the debt due from America to the subjects of Great Britain,
which I have heard estimated at four or five raillions of pounds. This
debt was accumulated from a balance in trade annually accruing to Great
Britain from the causes hereinbefore pointed out. That trade raust be
destructive where such a balance continually arises against us. Surely
it is proper to guard against such an event in future. This raight be
effected, in part, perhaps, by laying heavy duties, if not actual prohibi
tions, on the importation of such articles as are the produce of the United
States. Is it not surprising, for example, that bar-iron, lead, saltpetre,
leather, train-oil, tallow, candles, soap, malt-liquors, butter, beef, pork, and
potatoes, should constitute a part of the annual imports from Europe to
America ? "
Did not this writer understand that legislation, for the pur
pose of turning the balance of trade in our favor, was a
" regulation of trade " ] and is not the protecting tariff which
he recommends exactly an instance of such legislation?
I spare you. Sir, the infliction of raore of these superfluous
proofs. And yet the nature of the fact to be proved — that a
whole people, a whole generation of our fathers, had in view,
as one grand end and purpose of their new governraent, tbe
acquisition of the raeans of restraining, by governraental action,
the iraportation of foreign manufactures, for the encourage
ment of manufactures and of all labor at home, and desired
and raeant to do this by clothing the new government with this
specific power of regulating coraraerce — required and justified
a pretty wide collection and display of their opinions, suffer
ings, expectations, and vocabulary, from sources the most
numerous and the most scattered.
And now, from the bosom of the people holding these opin
ions, oppressed by these incommodities, nourishing these hopes,
determined on this relief, and speaking this language, arose
the Constitution, — imraortal, unchangeable ! In fulfilment of
these hopes, it embodied the great governmental instrumen
tality which had been determined on, in the exact language

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 99
which more than twenty years had made farailiar, I say,
then, sir, that when the country called the convention together
which formed the Constitution, it was the general design to
confer the protecting power upon the new government ; that
the governmental power to regulate trade was generally under
stood to embrace the protecting power ; and it was inserted
in the Constitution exactly because that was its meaning.
Before proceeding further in the accumulation of evidence,
ab extra, of the meaning and objects of this power to regulate
commerce, let me pause to attend to some of the reasoning
by which the proposition which I maintain has been en
countered. I do not think, then, Sir, that anybody will deny that, in the
comraercial, political, and general vocabulary of 1787, and of
all the period back to 1764, a discriminating tariff', a tariff
discrirainating for the protection of doraestic industry, was
universally called a comraercial regulation. Everybody will
agree that, if at that tirae it had been written or spoken that
England, the States, or any other government upon earth, had
the power to make a coraraercial regulation or to regulate cora
raerce, it would have been universally understood (such was
the settled forra of speech) to include the power to make a
strict protecting tariff", and that such a tariff would have been
one of the most ordinary and most familiar acts in exercise of
such power of regulation. But then it will be said that it
does not follow that the same language raeans, in this Consti
tution, when applied to and asserted of this government, what
it meant everywhere else, when applied to or asserted of any
other government in the world. England, the States, under
the power to regulate coraraerce, could make a strict and tech
nical protecting tariff": Congress, under the same power, or
rather under the same exact forra of expression, the same
enunciation in terms of power, can do no such thing.
Sir, he who asserts this has the burden of proof heavily
upon hira. Independently altogether of the evidence which I
have already presented, to show that the country looked di
rectly to this power of regulating coraraerce as the precise
power under and by which the new governraent was to tax or
prohibit imports for the encouragement of manufactures ; inde
pendently of that, when you admit, as you must, that, for raore

100 SPEECHES USf THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
than twenty years before the Constitution was formed, this
language was universally current in the Colonies and States ;
that it had acquired, by force of circumstances, an unusually
precise, definite, and well-understood sense ; that it had all that
tirae been eraployed to designate or to include a certain known
governraental function ; that when applied to England, the
States, and all other governraents, it had, in the understanding
of everybody, embraced a certain species and exercise of power
for a certain purpose ; — when you admit this, and then find it
here in the Constitution of this governraent, employed to con
fer a power on it, must you not adrait that the presumption is,
that it is used in the sense which everybody had understood it
so long to bear, when applied to other governments, — neither
larger nor narrower ; that it means to include the same well-
known function, and not to exclude it ; that it means to com
municate the same extent and the same purpose of power, and
not less, — the same in quantity, the same in object "?
How is this conclusion evaded ? I have heard it attempted
thus : The powers given by the Constitution to this govern
ment are given in trust, to accoraplish the specific and few
objects of the Constitution. The proraotion of manufactures
is not one of the objects of the Constitution ; the proraotion of
commerce is. The power to regulate commerce, therefore, is
given in trust, for the accoraraodation and promotion of com
merce, technically and strictly so called. This, for substance,
is the argument of a very able writer in the " Southern Re
view " of August, 1 830.
Now, Sir, waiving for a moraent the direct proof aliunde
which I have produced, and shall produce, to show the exact
raeaning of this grant of the power of coraraercial regulation,
I answer, that it is true that the powers of the Constitution
are given in trust for its objects ; that the powers are given in
trust for the objects of those powers. But then arises the
question, what are the objects of this particular power 1 What
are the purposes which it was inserted in the Constitution to
accoraplish ? You beg the whole proposition in dispute, when
you assert that it is no part of the objects of the Constitution
to develop the productive capacities of the country, by pro
tecting it from an unpropitious and deleterious foreign com
merce, and securing it a beneficial one. The precise question

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. IQl
is, if this is not in part the object of this very power ? It
strikes rae. Sir, that our opponents on this general question
assume, that because coraraerce is the subject on which the
constitutional regulations are to operate, therefore the end and
purpose for which these regulations raust be raade, is the di
rect and immediate advancement or enlargement of coraraerce
itself, without regard to its qualities or its adverse or propitious
influence on the nation by which or with which it is carried on.
What else they raean when they say that this power is given
with a view to " coraraerce as an end," I confess I do not
know ; but surely this is pure assumption, and will not bear a
moment's examination. In the first place, they forget that the
unlimited terms of the constitutional grant, explained and de
fined by the historical deduction which I have exhibited, au
thorize the raaking of sorae such regulations as conclusively
deraonstrate that the object and purpose of the grant is not
solely and directly the enlargeraent of coraraerce as an end,
without regard to the question, what are its imports, or what
its exports, or what its influence on the interior labors and
prosperity of the country; but rather the promotion of national
prosperity by means of a judiciously regulated commercial
intercourse. The grant is of power to regulate commerce.
The grant is general ; it is exclusive as well as general. It is
a power to prescribe rules by which commerce shall be con
ducted ; it is a power to make comraercial regulations. Un
less, then, the extent of this grant is limited by other clauses
of the Constitution, or by other evidence of an intent to lirait
it; unless, in some such way, it be shown that there are some
comraercial regulations which the Constitution did not raean
to authorize you to raake, taking the grant by itself, and con
struing it by the law of grant, it coraraunicates power to make
all commercial regulations. It is not a power to make some,
but all. It is not a power to do some of the things, to pass
some of the laws, which are acts in exercise of a general
power to regulate coraraerce, but to do thera all. It extends
to all, or it reaches not one. Well, araong them, among the
most comraon and best known regulations of coraraerce, the
raost coraraon and best known acts in exercise of a power to
regulate coraraerce, as we have seen, was a discrirainating and
protecting tariff; a law raoulding commercial intercourse in
9*

102 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
such manner as to invite to the development of domestic labor.
The grant, then, communicates a power to make such a regu
lation among others. It stands precisely as if the constitu
tional language had been, congress shall have power to pre
scribe rules for the regulations of commerce, and among them
protecting tariffs. The analysis of the whole complete aggre
gate of things authorized, reveals this act as one of them.
We take, then, by the legal necessary construction of the
grant, the power to make a protecting tariff'; and the nature
of the power itself involves and discloses the object of the
power, to wit, protection. The nature of the operation au
thorized to be performed on commerce, evinces that there is
an end and purpose in the contemplation of the Constitution
beyond commerce itself as an end; and that is the national
prosperity. But, in the next place, these reasoners seem to forget that
commerce is, from its nature, and was regarded by the people
of this country, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution,
and by all governments, and all people then or ever in the
world, a mere vast means of prosperity, or of decay, to a na
tion by whom or with whom it is carried on ; and therefore
that the Constitution, when it clothed you with the general
power of regulating it, intended that you should do so with a
view to the attainment of those ends, of which, in its nature,
and in the opinions of nations, it is capable of being made the
instruraent. The framers of the Constitution meant to clothe
you with the power of disarming it of all the evil and extract
ing from it all the good to which the wisdom of government is
equal. They could not have intended to do anything so absurd
as simply to authorize and require you to promote, enlarge, or
advance coraraerce, per se, and in the abstract, without regard
to its quality ; to its adverse or its propitious influence upon
the prosperity, the morality, the health, and the industry of the
people ; to the goods it brought home ; to the goods it carried
away ; the national character of the tonnage it employed, and
of the labor it rewarded. They did not look to commerce, but
to beneficial commerce. They saw the distinction perfectly.
They regarded it, as did the country universally, and as all
nations in all ages have done, as an agent of large and varied
influence, sometimes of good and sometiraes of evil, according

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 103
to its nature, and according to the regulations under which it
was conducted. They knew, or they believed, that in one
form, under one system of regulations, it might strengthen,
adorn, and enrich a State ; might seat it on the throne of the
sea ; might raise its merchants to be princes, yet not impover
ish and not depress its mechanics and its farmers ; raight
stimulate the thousand hands of its labor by multiplying its
occupations, enhancing its rewards, relieving it from oppressive
competitions with the redundant capital, matured skill, and
pauperism of older nations ; might swell its exports with the
products of its own skill ; raight turn in on it the golden stream
of the metals, and make it the workshop, as well as the ware
house, of the world : while, in another form, and under an
other system of regulations, it raight impoverish and enfeeble
it ; drain it of its specie ; overstock its agriculture, yet de
prive it of a market; plunge it beneath an insupportable
foreign debt; and restrain the division of its labor and the
development of its genius. This is the exact view taken of
coraraerce, by the whole American press, from 1783 to 1787.
Coraraerce, then, in its nature, and the understanding of all,
is a means. When, therefore, the general power of regulat
ing it is given to the national government, according to what
principles, for the accomplishraent of what objects, are you to
exert it ? Are you not to do it for those ends, and for all of
them, which, by the general theory and practice of govern
raents, it is adapted to attain ? And is not the relief of domes
tic labor, from the oppressive competitions of an unrestrained
foreign trade, among these ends ?
Well, now. Sir, to answer this reasoning, it must be shown,
by inspection of other parts of the Constitution, by an analysis
of its general structure, or by evidence ab extra, that this
grant of power is not so broad. It raust be shown, in some
such way, that there were some well-known and important
comraercial regulations, some acts familiarly and notoriously
done by all governments, in exercise of the power to regulate,
which were not intended to be granted by the terms of this
most coraprehensive and most unlimited grant. It raust be
shown, in some such way, that this pretty important exception
ought to be engrafted on the grant : the congress shall have
power to regulate trade with foreign nations, provided, how-

104 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
ever, that it shall aim at nothing but free trade ; that it shall
have no power to raake any, or no power to raake all those
comraercial regulations by which other governments always en
deavored, and the United States of Araerica, since the Revolu
tion, have endeavored, to increase their own tonnage ; to make
their exports exceed their imports, to avoid a drain of their
specie ; to preserve a favorable balance of trade ; and to draw
forth their own capacities of labor and of wealth, and their
own means of independence. But can you thus qualify the
unalterable and the unliraited terras of the Constitution 1 How
do you do it ? You say you reason frora other parts, and from
the general structure of the instrument ; and that no other
part of it displays any solicitude for the encouragement of do
mestic industry, nor does anything to enable you to promote
it. But what is that argument worth, even if the fact were
so ? Does it abridge the clear and broad terms of this par
ticular grant 1 Because the Constitution clothes you with no
other means of developing the industrial capacities of the coun
try than a discreet, wise, and customary commercial system,
do you infer, against its positive terras, that it could not have
intended to give you even that raeans ? Might it not give you
that, and yet give you no other? Might it not go so far,
and no farther ? Might it not clothe you with that large and
imperial power, without going on to authorize you to prescribe
the forms of apprentices' indentures, and determine how many
hours in a day the operatives in a woollen-mill shall be held to
labor '? From the nature of the case, is not the selection of
powers to be conferred on the general government, from the
whole field of sovereign power, in sorae measure arbitrary, —
arbitrary in what is given, arbitrary in what is left 1 The line
must be drawn somewhere. How it is drawn, in fact, is a
matter of pure interpretation. You cannot put your finger
upon a granted power, and say, If the fraraers of the Con
stitution meant to give this, logical and political consistency
would have led thera to give another ; but that they have not
given, and therefore they have not given this. Such reason
ing substitutes the fancies of sophists for the text of the Con
stitution, and turns the guide of life into foolishness aud a
sturabling-block. And what is there in the general structure of the Constitu-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 105
tion, what is there in the nature of the government established
by it, which renders it so improbable that the power of regulat
ing commerce, for the development of native capacity and in
dustry, should be given to it, that you must abridge, by sup
position, an apparently express grant of that very power ? I
say. Sir, that the Constitution, in conferring this power on this
government, has been true to itself; it has acted like itself; it
has acted in conformity with, its peculiar structure, and its
grand airas. What is the power, after all ? Nothing raore
and nothing less than a means of defending American industry
against foreign instruments of annoyance. Foreign govern
ments, or foreign subjects, pour in upon us importations of
articles which make us poor, or make us idle, or make us dis
eased, or make us vicious. No governraent that ever stood
one hundred years on the earth but had the power of defend
ing itself against aggression so deleterious, although in form
pacific. To which of the governments in our system, the
State or the National, should the power belong ? Reasoning
on the nature of our system, and a priori, which should pos
sess it ? Should it not be that which possesses the treaty-
making power, the war- and peace-making power, the power
of regulating all foreign intercourse ? Should the States re
tain it? Was not the Constitution framed in great measure,
because they were totally unequal to its effective administra
tion ?
In a still larger view. Sir, of the offices and the powers of
the national government, under the Constitution, you ought to
have this power of protecting the labor of your country. The
means, the ends, the principles of determination, pertain ap
propriately to the imperial and grand trust with which you are
clothed. The means is the regulation of foreign intercourse,
which all belongs to you. The ends are the independence and
the happiness of America. The principles of determination
are the most interesting phenomena of the social and political
world, the truths of the first of practical sciences, the loftiest
and most comprehensive sentiments and aspirations of states
manship and patriotism. What is it that you do when you
exercise this power ? Why, Sir, you deterraine by what sys
tera of foreign intercourse our vast capacities of growth and
wealth may best be developed ; the unsightly but precious eie-

106 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
mental material that sleeps beneath our soil be transfigured
into forras of beauty and use ; the children of labor in all their
fields be trained through labor to corapetence, corafort, and
consideration ; " our agriculture be made to grow, and our
commerce to expand ; " the golden chain of union be strength
ened ; our vast destinies unfolded and fulfilled. This is what
you do. And I say the means you work by, the ends you aim
at, and the pohcy you proceed on, are just such as such a sys- '
tem as ours should comrait to you.
But, Sir, to advance from these less certain reasonings to in
disputable facts, which, indeed, I have partially anticipated. I
hold it to be susceptible of as rigorous moral deraonstration
as any truth of history, first, that, before the Constitution was
presented to thera, the people of this country, generally, de
raanded a governraent which should have power to raould their
whole foreign intercourse into the most beneficial form, and,
among other things, should have power to mould it into such
form as might bring out American labor, agricultural, mechan
ical, manufacturing, navigating, and commercial, into its com
pletest developraent, and for that end to make discrirainating
tariff's ; secondly, that when, at length, the doors of the conven
tion vvere thrown open, and the Constitution, the object of so
many hopes, of so much solicitude, was presented to their eager
view, they believed that they found in it just the power they
had looked for so long, and they adopted it in that confidence ;
thirdly, that every meraber of the convention itself supposed it
to contain the power ; and fourthly, that the new government,
from its first organization, proceeded to execute it vigorously
and usefully by a broad policy of protection openly avowed, —
protection of agriculture, protection of navigation, protection of
manufactures ; and that, although particular exertions of the
policy were veheraently resisted on grounds of expediency, and
although other national legislation was denied to be authorized
by the Constitution, the power to push this policy to the ut
raost limit of congressional discretion was never called in ques
tion for raore than thirty, or certainly raore than twenty years.
Sir, if this be so, and yet the Constitution contains no such
power, vain is the search after raoral truth ; idle the attempt
to embody the ideas of a people in the frame of their govern
ment, and in the language of their fundamental law. You

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.

107

were as wisely employed in writing them upon the clouds of
the summer-evening western sky, in the dream of seeing them
carried round the world in the train of the next day's sun.
Well, is it not so ? I have shown you already that the
country demanded, and expected beforehand, a government
which should possess this power ; that it had done so for
years; that the events of every hour, frora the poace to the
rising of the convention, only increased the urgency of the
deraand, and the confidence of the expectation. I proceed to
show, in the next place, that when at last the Constitution was
given to the longing sight of the people, and they threw thera
selves upon it as a faraished host upon miraculous bread, their
faculties sharpened and prepared by so many years of discus
sions, and by the more instructive discipline of suffering,
stimulated to read by hope and fear and jealousy and curi
osity, then they thought they found in it this power. There
it was, in the very language familiar to thera frora childhood ;
language associated, fast and iraperishably, with the story of
the long wrongs of England, the resistance of America, the
great naraes of heroes and wise men, the living and the dead,
with liberty and with glory.
See if the fact is not so, and then see how resistless it is as
evidence that the power really was there. Look into the press
of that day, — that day when men were great, and events were
great, — look into the newspaper press, and tell me if you find,
anywhere, a whisper of coraplaint of any deficiency of power
in this regard in the new Constitution. You have heard, in
the selections I have read, something of what the people ex
pected ; do you find, by looking farther into the same source
of evidence, that they were disappointed in their expectations %
Fears there were, sickly fears, patriotic fears, and loudly
uttered, that the Constitution was too strong, — too strong for
liberty. But who said that, in its protecting energy, it was
too weak % Who complained that he did not find it clothed
with the whole power of defence against other nations, — de
fence against their arms, their policy, their pernicious trade,
their extorted and pauper labor '? I can only say that I have
found no trace of such an objection.
But see the affirmative evidence of a general belief that the
Constitution did contain the power. Look at the long proces-

108 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
sions of the trades, where the whole mechanical and manu
facturing industry of the country assembled to celebrate, as a
jubilee, the establishment of a government by which their
interests might at length hope to be cherished. Is it not as if
the universal heart of the people was throbbing with the sud
den acquisition of a second and a real independence ? Hear
the debates in the conventions of the States, deliberating upon
the Constitution. In that of Massachusetts, one of its advo
cates, urging the importance of making the entire grant of
power to congress which it contemplated, said : —
" Our raanufactures are another great subject which has received no
encouragement by national duties on foreign manufactures, and they
never can by any authority in the old confederation. Besides this, the
very face of our country leads to raanufactures ; our numerous falls of
water, and places for mills, where paper, snuff, gunpowder, iron-works,
and numerous other articles are prepared, — these will save us immense
sums of money that would otherwise go to Europe. The question is,
have these been encouraged ? Has congress been able, by national laws,
to prevent the iraportation of such foreign coraraodities as are made from
such raw materials as we ourselves raise ? It is alleged that the citizens
of the United States have contracted debts within the last three years,
with the subjects of Great Britain, for the amount of near six millions of
dollars, and that consequently our lands are raortgaged for that sum. So
Corsica was once mortgaged to the Genoese merchants for articles which
her inhabitants did not want, or which they could have made themselves ;
and she was afterwards sold to a foreign power. If we wish to encourage
our own manufactures, to preserve our own commerce, to raise the value
of our lands, we must give congress the powers in question." — Elliots
Debates, vol. i., page 76.
And again : —
" Our agriculture has not been encouraged by the imposition of ma
terial duties on rival produce, nor can it be, so long as the several States
may raake contradictory laws." — Page 74.
And an opponent, Mr. Widgery, was annoyed by so much
earnest repetition and enforcement of this very topic in favor
of the new governraent. It is perfectly plain that he felt it to
be the effective and decisive consideration by which the raasses
were raoved. " All we hear is," he says, " that the merchant
and farmer will flourish, and the mechanic and tradesman
make their fortunes directly."
The debates of other States the most interested in this
species of industry are imperfectly preserved ; but nowhere,

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 109
as Mr. Madison has well said, do you find a particle of evi
dence that a doubt on the power was entertained. " The
general objects of the Union," said Mr. Davie, in the Con
vention of North Carolina, "are, 1st, to protect us against
foreign invasion ; 2d, to defend us against internal corarao
tions and insurrections ; 3d, to promote the commerce, agri
culture, and manufactures of America." — Elliot's Debates,
vol. iii. p. 31.
Read the memorials in which the mechanics and manufac
turers of the large towns, iraraediately upon the organization
of congress, invoked an exertion of this power ; and see how
confidentlv its existence is assuraed, and its prompt and bene
ficial exercise relied on. Familiar as they are to you, famihar
to everybody who has exarained this question at all, they era-
body in such vivid and coraprehensive expression the grand,
popular want and conviction in which the Constitution had its
birth, and its instantaneous and universal interpretation, that I
venture to call your attention again to passages from three of
them. They were all presented during the pending of the
first revenue and protecting law of congress, and they contrib
uted, I have no doubt, to determine its policy and to shape its
details. Hear the " tradesmen and mechanics of Baltiraore."
" Setting forth " (I use the condensed summary of the reporter) " that,
since the close of the late war and the completion of the Revolution, they
have observed with serious regret the manufacturing and the trading in
terest of the country rapidly declining, and the attempts of the State leg
islatures to remedy the evil failing of their object ; that, in the present
melancholy state of our country, the number of poor increasing for want
of employment, foreign debts accumulating, houses and land depreciating
in value, and trade and manufactures languishing and expiring, they look
up to the supreme legislature of the United States as the guardians of
the whole empire, and from their united wisdom and patriotism and ar
dent love of their country, expect to derive that aid and assistance which
alone can dissipate their just apprehensions, and animate them with hopes
of success in future, by iraposing on all foreign articles which can be
made in America, such duties as will give a just and decided preference
to their labors, discountenancing that trade which tends so materially to
injure them and impoverish their country, measures which, in their conse
quences, may also contribute to the discharge of the national debt and the
due support of government ; that they have annexed a list of such ar
ticles as are or can be manufactured amongst them, and humbly trust in
the wisdom of the legislature to grant them, in coramon with the other
mechanics and manufacturers of the United States, that relief which may
appear proper."
VOL. II. 10

110 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
This was followed in a week by another, of the "mechanics
and manufacturers of the city of New York," which, having
recited that their prospects of improving wealth had been
blasted after the peace by a system of commercial usurpation ;
that trade had been loaded with foreign fetters ; enterprise and
industry discouraged ; the developraent of the vast natural re
sources ofthe country restrained; agriculture without stimulus ;
and manufactures, the sister of commerce, participating in its
distresses ; that a profusion of foreign articles had deluged the
country, presenting a delusive appearance of plenty, and de
ceiving the people into the raistake that excessive and deleteri
ous iraportation was a flourishing trade, proceeds : —
" Wearied by their fruitless exertions, your petitioners have long looked
forward with anxiety for the establishment of a government which would
have power to check the growing evil, and extend a protecting hand to
the interests of commerce and the arts. Such a government is now estab
lished. On the promulgation of the Constitution just now commencing
its operations, your petitioners discovered in its principles the remedy
which they had so long and so earnestly desired. To your honorable
body the mechanics and raanufacturers of New York look up with confi
dence, convinced that, as the united voice of America has furnished you
with the means, so your knowledge of our common wants has given you
the spirit, to unbind our fetters and rescue our country from disgrace and
ruin." Then carae in the " tradesmen and manufacturers of the
town of Boston," who say, —
" That on the revival of their mechanical arts and manufactures, now
ruinously depressed, depend the wealth and prosperity of the Northern
States ; and that the citizens of these States conceive the object of their
independence but half obtained, till these national purposes are established
on a permanent and extensive basis by the legislation of the federal
government." And who in that asserably of raen — many of whom sat in the
convention which framed the Constitution, all of whom had par
taken in the discussions which preceded its adoption — breathed
a doubt on the competence of congress to receive such petitions
as these, and to grant their prayer ¦? "I conceive," (said the
most eloquent of the eloquent, Mr. Ames) — "I conceive. Sir,
that the present Constitution was dictated by commercial neces
sity more than any other cause. The want of an efficient gov
ernraent to secure the raanufacturing interest, and to advance

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. m
our commerce, was long seen by men of judgment, and pointed
out by patriots solicitous to proraote our general welfare."
But I have raore to say, before I have done, on the proceed
ings of that congress, and leave thera for the present ; in the
raean tirae I subrait to you that the proof is coraplete, that the
people who adopted the Constitution universally, and without a
doubt, believed that it embodied this power. It was for that
they received it with one wide acclaim, with tears of exultation,
with cereraonies of auspicious significance, befitting the dawn
of our age of pacific and industrial glory. Even those who
feared its iraperial character and its other powers, who thought
they saw the States attracted to its centre and absorbed by its
rays, did not fear this power.
And now. Sir, I wonder if, after all, the people were deluded
into this belief! I wonder if that heroic and energetic gener
ation bf our fathers, which had studied the controversies and
had gone through the tasks of the Revolution ; which had
fraraed the Confederation, proved its weakness, proved its de
fects ; which had been trained by a long and dreary experience
of the insufficiency of a norainal independence to build up a
diffused and massive and national prosperity, if the trade laws
of foreign governraents, the combinations of foreign capitalists,
the necessities of foreign existence, are allowed to take from
the native laborer his meal of meat, and from his children their
school, and depress his standard of comfortable life ; which
had been trained by experience, by the discussions of its ablest
minds, in an age of extraordinary mental activity, and yet of
great morality, sobriety, and subordination, peculiarly favor
able to the task, trained thus to the work of constructing a
new govemment, — I wonder if such a generation were deceived,
after all ! I wonder if it was not living water, that which they
supposed they saw gushing frora the rock, and sparkling and
swelling at their feet, but only a delusive imitation, struck out
by the wand of an accursed enchantraent ! No, Sir ; no raan
who believes that the people of this country were fit to govern
themselves, fit to frame a Constitution, fit to judge on it, fit
to administer it, — no such man can say that the behef, the pop
ular belief in 1789, of the existence of this power, under all
the circumstances, is not absolutely conclusive proof of its ex
istence.

112 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
And then, in addition to this, how do you deal with the fact
that all the framers of the Constitution themselves, as well as
every public man alive in 1789, and the entire intelligence of
the country, supposed they had inserted this power in it ?
Did not those who made it know what they had done?
Considering their erainent general character, their civil discre
tion, their preparation of much study, and yet more experience
of arduous public aff'airs, for the task ; their thorough acquaint
ance with the existing systems. State and national, and with
the public mind and opinions of the day ; the long, patient,
and solitary labor which they bestowed on it ; the iraraediate
necessity iraposed on them of explaining and defending it to
the country — in view of this, if you find them unanimously
concurring in ascribing this power to the instrument, is it not
the transcendentalism of unbelief to doubt ? Do we really
think we are likely to understand their own work now, better
than they did the day they finished it ?
Well, Sir, you have satisfactory evidence that the members
of the convention went, all of them, to their graves in the be
lief that the Constitution contained this power. Mr. Madison's
opinion I have read. We have it on unquestionable authority
that Mr. Gallatin has repeatedly said that, upon his entrance
into political life in 1789, he found it to be the universal opin
ion of those who framed the Constitution and those who re
sisted its adoption, the opinion of all the statesmen of the day,
that congress possessed the power to protect domestic industry
by raeans of comraercial regulations. Stronger proof to this
point, indeed, you cannot desire than is afforded by the history
of the first revenue and protection law of the federal govern
raent. Let rae recall that history a little in detail. Consider
ing how raany members of that congress had sat in the con
vention; that all the members of the convention were still
alive, and still observers of what was passing on the public
stage ; how anxiously the whole people, now divided into two
great and already excited parties, and the several local regions
of the country, developing already the antagonism of their
policy, were looking on — in this view, the express affirmation
by some, and the tacit universal concession by others, of this
power, in every stage of the protracted and anxious debate
which resulted iu that law,' ought to be conclusive on the ques-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. US
tion of its existence with every sound raind. But observe its
history. It was Mr. Madison who, on the ninth of April, introduced
the subject of providing a revenue by imposts. And it is very
material to remark that his original purpose was to pass a
strict and temporary revenue law, and to pass it immediately,
in order, as he said, to intercept the importations of the spring.
Accordingly he took, as the basis of his measure, the proposi
tions of the congress of the Confederation, of 1783. Those
propositions imposed a general and uniform ad valorem duty
on the whole mass of imported articles, except spirituous
liquors, wines, sugars, teas, molasses, cocoa, and coffee, which
were charged with higher and specific duties. This old scheme
of imposts Mr. Madison proposed to adopt as the basis of the
new law, engrafting on it only a tonnage duty discriminating
in favor of Araerican vessels. His purpose, therefore, you
perceive, as I have said, was revenue purely, and not a com
mercial regulation for protection. Not one of the articles on
which the specific and higher duties would have been laid, and
were laid, under this old raodel scherae, were produced in the
United States, except rum. The discrimination was for rev
enue, and the whole raeasure was for revenue. Indeed, Mr.
Madison said, on introducing it, in so many words, —
" In pursuing this measure, I know that two points occur for our con
sideration. The first respects the general regulation of commerce, which,
in my opinion, ought to be as free as the policy of the nations will admit.
The second relates to revenue alone ; and this is the point I mean more
particularly to bring into the view of the committee. Not being at present
possessed of sufficient materials for fully elucidating these points, and our
situation admitting of no delay, I shall propose such articles of regulations
only as are likely to occasion the least difficulty. The propositions made
on this subject by congress in 1783, having received, generally, the ap
probation of the several States of the Union, in some form or other, seem
well calculated to become the basis of the temporary systera which I wish
the committee to adopt. I am well aware that the changes which have
taken place in many of the States, and in our public circumstances, since
that period, will require, in some degree, a deviation from the scale of
duties then affixed ; nevertheless, for the sake of that expedition which is
necessary in order to embrace the spring importations, I should recom
mend a general adherence to the plan."
And later in the debate he said, —
" It was my view to restrain the first essay on this subject principally
10*

114, SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
to the object of revenue, and raake this rather a teraporary expedient
than anything permanent." — Gales Sf Seaton' s Debates, old series, vol. i.
pp. 107, 115.
But what followed'? The next day, Mr. Fitzsimons, of
Pennsylvania, presented a suggestion which resulted in a total
departure frora Mr. Madison's plan, and in the substitution
for a pure and temporary revenue law qf a permanent law,
which was at once and avowedly a measure of revenue and a
commercial regulation for the encouragement and protection of
American agriculture, navigation, and manufactures ; at once
an exercise of the power of taxing imports and the power to
regulate trade ; at once, in the terras of its own preamble, an
act " for the support of government, the debt of the United
States, and the encouragement and protection of manufac
tures." He began by saying, —
" I observe, Mr. Chairman, by what the gentlemen have said, who
have spoken on the subject before you, that the proposed plan of revenue
is viewed by them as a temporary system, to be continued only till proper
materials are brought forward and arranged in raore perfect form. I
confess. Sir, that I carry my views on this subject much further ; that I
earnestly wish one which, in its operation, will be some way adequate to
our present situation, as it respects our agriculture, our manufactures, and
our commerce ; " —
and concluded with a motion, that there be added to the few
articles which Mr. Madison had proposed to subject to specific
duties, and duties above the general average, more than fifty
others, which should be also specifically and more highly taxed.
Forty-five of these were of the class of articles produced or
manufactured in the United States ; they were articles coming
in competition with almost the entire circle of American manu
facturing and agricultural labor ; and they were subsequently
so increased as to surround that whole circle with a protecting
tariff". This proposition of Mr. Fitzsimons was made for the pur
pose of uniting the objects of protection and revenue. He
avowed this to be his object. " Among the articles," said he,
in introducing his motion, (page 111,) " which I would have
specifically taxed, are some calculated to encourage the produc
tions of our country, and protect our infant manufactures;
besides others tending to operate as sumptuary restrictions
upon articles which are often termed those of luxury," So he

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 115
was understood by everybody. Mr. White, of Virginia, who
followed him next in the debate, in opposition to his amend
ment, suggested that its consideration would consume too rauch
time; "for," said he, (page 112,) "in order to charge^ specific
articles of manufacture, so as to encourage our domestic ones,
it will be necessary to. exaraine the present state of each
throughout the Union." Mr. Tucker, of South Carolina, fol
lowing hira in opposition, " considered the subject of very
great iraportance, as it related to our agriculture, raanufactures,
and commerce," but advised a teraporary, iraraediate arrange
ment. Upon this, Mr. Hartley, of Pennsylvania, submitted a
brief, but very clear and very sound argument, directly in
favor of the policy of protection. He differed from those who
preferred a " limited and partial " measure " relating to rev
enue alone," and advised to place the whole " on as broad a
bottora as at that tirae was practicable," He thought the
arguraent of Mr, Tucker ought not to " discourage the cora
raittee from taking such measures as would tend to protect
and promote our domestic manufactures." " The old world,"
he proceeded, " had long pursued the practice of giving great
encouragement to the establishment of manufactures, by such
partial duties on foreign imports as to give the horae raanu
factures a considerable advantage in the price in raarket ; and
it was both politic and just that the general government should
do the same thing. Our raanufactures had arrived at that
stage of advancement, that, according to the policy of every
enlightened nation, they ought to receive the encouragement
necessary to perfect them without oppressing the other parts
of the community." In this posture of the debate, Mr. Madi
son again rose, and, in a speech of considerable elaborateness,
declared, at length, that he thought Mr. Fitzsiraons's proposi
tion ought to be entertained. " Upon the whole," he said,
concluding his observations, " as I think some of the proposi
tions may be productive of revenue, and sorae may protect our
domestic raanufactures, though the latter subject ought not to
be too confusedly blended with the former, I hope the commit
tee will receive them, and let them lie over, in order that we
may have time to consider how far they are consistent with
justice and policy,"
The motion of Mr. Fitzsimons was thereupon immediately

116 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
adopted ; the bill was transforraed into a raeasure of blended
revenue and protection ; other articles were subsequently added
to the class of articles specifically taxed, or taxed by discrimi
nation above the general ad valorem ; the rates of duties were
arranged ; and, after a discussion of extraordinary interest,
ability, excitement, and importance, . running through three
months, the first congress of the new Constitution — at its first
session, its very first measure of general legislation, its first
raeasure of any kind after having declared by law in what
manner its members should swear to support the Constitu
tion — passed an act to raise revenue ; and also to fulfil to the
whole, vast, young, and anxious family of American labor ; to
the agriculture of the South and West; to the fisheries and
the navigation of the East ; to the mechanical trades of the
cities ; to the manufacturing industry of the central, and all
the States — to fulfil to all, to the cotton, indigo, and hemp
grower ; to the grain grower and grazier ; to the builder of
vessels and the fisherman ; to the raanufactures of leather,
clothing, cordage, iron, glass, paper, wood — to fulfil to all
something of the promise of the new governraent, and to ex
tend to all some portion of the security and the stimulus of a
real national independence. And now, pause for a moment,
and appreciate the light which the history of that act sheds
upon the constitutional opinions of that congress, and what
inferences those opinions suggest regarding the true meaning
of the Constitution.
Sir, the doctrine of the extreme South, I mean rather the
extreme doctrine of the South, confined I hope to few, is, that
you can irapose duties for revenue only; that, in doing so,
you raay discrirainate to be sure, but only for purposes and on
principles of revenue as such, laying a low duty or a high one,
a specific or an ad valorem, accordingly as one or the other
will yield the most revenue at the least expense and with the
most certainty. If such a scheme of duties unintentionally
(for if you intended the result it avoids the whole) aids the
manufacturer or mechanic, well and good ; if not, let him take
care of himself. This, they say, is incidental protection, and
it is all the Constitution authorizes ! But was this the doctrine
of the first congress % I say, on the contrary, that, in its
main structure and its substantial character, the act whose his-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LAROR. H'^
tory I have detailed was an act for protection as the principal,
and for revenue as the incident ; that, although at first designed
for revenue only, it was wholly reconstructed with another ob
ject as the leading object, not indeed inconsistent with revenue,
rather in aid of it, intended to be in aid of it, but obtaining it,
so far as purpose was concerned, incidentally ; that, from the be
ginning to the end, the power of affording protection directly,
as an end, as a main purpose, was assumed by everybody; and
that it was that power which every member must have consid
ered hiraself exerting, in raore than three quarters of all the leg
islation which was finally embodied in the law. True undoubt
edly it is, that all the revenue which the act in its final form
could be made to yield was needed by the young government.
True it is, therefore, that, in my judgment, this act is not a
precedent for bringing, with a view to protection, more raoney
into the treasury than you require for the wants of governraent.
But for discrimination, with a view to protection ; for admit
ting some things free, as materials of manufacture, sorae under
specific duties and sorae under ad valorem, sorae under low
duties and sorae under high, for the purpose of protection ;
for rejecting a raeasure, efficient and suitable as a revenue
measure, precisely because it did not recognize and did not
secure protection, and substituting one which did; for putting
forward protection as a great object of national policy, of
somewhat more consequence than the idle and childish sym
metry of horizontal tariffs ; for treating a protecting tariff' it-'
self as a coraraercial regulation, and to be referred to the
power of regulating coraraerce — for this it is a precedent, and
a precedent belonging to a better age, sanctioned by a higher
authority than almost any other in our whole series of national
legislation. Observe, Sir, how the mere pursuit of revenue was made to
yield to other considerations. Mr. Madison thought that, for
the purposes of revenue, more was lost than gained by seek
ing to unite the other object.
" I presume," said he, " that however much we may be disposed to pro
mote domestic manufactures, we ought to pay sorae regard to the present
policy of obtaining revenue. It raay be remarked, also, that, by /xm^' ora a
temporary expedient for this purpose, we may gain more than we shall lose
by suspending the consideration of the other subject until we obtain further

118 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
information of the state of our manufactures. We have at this time the
strongest motives for turning our attention to the point I have mentioned.
Every gentleman sees that the prospect of our harvest from the spring
importations is daily vanishing ; and if the comraittee delay levying and
collecting an impost until a system of protecting duties shall be perfected,
there will be no importations of any consequence on which the law is to
operate, because by that time all the spring vessels will have' arrived.
Therefore, from a pursuit of this policy, we shall suffer a loss equal to
the surplus which might be expected from a system of higher duties."
Yet that congress held the loss of duties on spring impor
tations a trifle, in comparison with permanently and systemat
ically sustaining the great interests of domestic labor. Ob
serve, too, and this is a consideration of great importance,
where you are inquiring after the constitutional opinions and
the quo animo of legislators, that, in making the successive
additions of protected articles, and in fixing the duties upon
thera, and throughout the whole atterapt to recast the original
bill, no raan assigns revenue, but every man assig-RS protection
as his motive and object. I have read the grounds on which
Mr. Fitzsimons and Mr. Hartley pressed and carried the orig
inal motion. Subsequently, on motion of others, other articles
were successively subjected to the specific and higher duty ;
and every one of them for the avowed object of protection, not
one for the avowed object of revenue. Sir, the arguments for
the steel, cordage, molasses, beef, hemp, and tonnage duties,
are exactly the arguments of those who, in 1816, 1820, 1824,
»built up that later and more developed policy which you call
the Araerican system, an anticipation in eifect of the substance
and language of those great debates.
Let me remind you now how pregnant the fact is, that not
a doubt was whispered on any side about the constitutional
power of Congress to think and do so much for protection.
The policy of raany of the provisions of the bill was vehe
mently controverted. The cordage duty, the tonnage duty,
the duties on raolasses, beer, tallow-candles, steel, — of which
Mr. Madison observes, " the object of selecting this must be
solely the encourageraent of the raanufacture, and not revenue,"
(page 154,) — hemp, nails, coal, were successively, and some of
thera keenly resisted ; they were urged on the sole ground of
protection, yet no man whispered a suspicion on the power.
I should more nearly express the fact, if I said that every-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. II9
body committed himself in favor of the power. Virginia
asked protection for her coal, and prohibition for her beef;
and South Carolina " was willing to make sacrifices to encour
age the manufacturing and maritirae interests of the sister
States," but asked protection for hemp, which, Mr. Burk said,
" her low, strong, rice lands produced in abundance." To
appreciate, to approach at all, the strength, significance, and
universality of this fact, you must meditate the entire debate.
But read at least Mr. Madison's principal speech, upon Mr.
Fitzsiraons's first proposition. I would rather look there for
his constitutional opinions, undesignedly announced, silently
assumed as raatter incontrovertible, and conceded by all, run
ning underneath and upholding the whole structure of his
thoughts upon the general subject, than even to his letter in
1828, written after a controversy had arisen, and age, and
intervening events and cares, might have worn the earlier
impression in any degree away. Let me open to you the
leading idea of that speech, and leave it to you to see for
yourselves how he develops it. The proposition of Mr. Fitz-
siraons, then, he suggested, raade it necessary to consider, not
merely temporary expedients of revenue, but the principles of
a commercial system. He had intended to regard revenue
alone, but the proposition led to, and would result in, " the
general regulation of coraraerce," (pages 107 and 116.) Ot)-
serve, sir, the moment it was suggested to blend protection
and revenue, he thought himself engaged in a general regula
tion of commerce.
What, then, he proceeded to inquire, are the true principles
of a commercial systera ? The first and the general rule is,
to have \t free, — ^as free as possible. He supports this briefly
and forcibly. But there are exceptions to the rule, he de
clares, and he proceeds to enumerate them. And what are
they, in his judgment ^ The first embraces discriminating
provisions for the protection and encouragement of Araerican
vessels; the second, duties on iraports to sustain or to de
velop manufacturing industry; the third, sumptuary prohibi
tions which, however, in any form but sumptuary duties, he
disapproves ; the fourth, embargoes in time of war ; the fifth,
provisions for encouraging the production within the nation
of all its military supplies ; the sixth, duties for revenue.

120 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
These are exceptions, he argues, by which we may wisely
restrict the general freedom of commerce. These exceptions
we have the constitutional power to engraft upon our general
law of free trade. We may restrain it to encourage Amer
ican ships and other American manufactures, for the uses of
peace or war ; to check luxury ; to withdraw our too adven
turous commerce from the grasp of an enemy, and to supply
a revenue for the wants of government. I commend to your
own reflections this enunciation of the general principle of
comraercial regulations and of the exceptions to it ; the affir
mation which it involves of the constitutional power of pro
tection ; the separation of the protecting and of the revenue
power from one another, and the enumeration of each as sub
stantive and distinct ; and his acquiescence in Mr. Fitzsim-
, ons's proposition to unite the exercise and the objects of both
powers in one law, " although he (Mr. Madison) thought the
two objects ought not to be too confusedly hlended." I com
mend all this to you, who would know his opinions on this
part of that greatest work of his own hands or of any man's,
the federal Constitution.
I have said that no raan then denied the power. Mr.
Ames, I have reminded you, expressly affirmed it. No news
paper denied it. The usurpations, imaginary or real, of the
two first administrations upon the Constitution, — their al
leged usurpations, — brought into life the party of State
rights and of Deraocracy ; but through all that treraendous
contest which ended in the revolution of 1801, no raan ac
cused them for having dared to protect the planter, the farmer,
the fisherman, the mechanic of Araerica. No one laid that
sin to their charge. The system of practical protection —
founded by the framers and in the age of the Constitution
and of Washington — grew with the growth and strengthened
with the strength of the nation. Every president, every con
gress, almost every public man, approved it. It went on
widening its circuit, increasing its energy, and multiplying its
beneficial eff'ects, but never changing its nature or its aims
for more than thirty years, when a subtle and a sectional
metaphysics suddenly discerned that it was all a fraud on the
Constitution. It is one of the bad habits of politics which grow up under

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. l£l
written systeras and liraited systeras of governraent to de
nounce what we think impolitic and oppressive legislation as
unconstitutional legislation. The language is at first rhetor
ically and metaphorically used; excited feeling, producing
inaccurate thought, contributes to give it currency ; classes of
States and parties weave it into their vocabulary, and it grows
into an article of faith. I have not a doubt that such is the
origin of this heresy.
Look, then, over the whole field of view which we have
traversed. The terms of the Constitution, interpreted by the
most indisputable and universal use of language of the time
and country, expressly grant the power. For years the whole
people — raen of business, statesmen, speculatists, the masses,
all — had demanded a Constitution which should contain the
power under those precise terras ; and they adopted it, in the
belief, and in a substantial sense for the reason, that it satisfied
that demand. The master-workraen by whora it was con
structed, — the entire contemporary intelligence and statesraan
ship, — supposed it contained the power. With the very first
breath it drew, the new government, in the age of Washing
ton, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, and with their
approbation, entered upon its declared exercise ; and for more
than thirty years its existence was universally adraitted.
I propose no raore. Sir, than to suggest the general nature
and raain points of an arguraent farailiar to the thoughts of
senators. To my mind it is conclusive. Exercise the power
or not, as you deem best for the good and glory of your
country, but do not deny its existence, lest you accuse that
energetic and heroic generation which gave us Independence
aud the Constitution, of delusion, fraud, and folly, such as
never disgraced any age or race of raen before.
I said, Mr. President, that congress had the power, and
that it was their duty also to afford adequate protection in this
exigency to the entire labor of the country. Something I
could wish to add upon this great duty ; but perhaps it raay
better be reserved until we have, as I earnestly hope we soon
shall have, a practical raeasure before us. I trust even that it
may be unnecessary to urge its performance on you at all.
The mode, the degree in which it shall be performed, may
disclose diversities of opinions. On this we shall stand in
VOL. II. 11

122 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
need of mutual forbearance and indulgence ; but, on the
solemn and peremptory character of the duty itself, how can
we differ "i Take counsel of the " ancient prudence ; " survey
the subject in the spirit of the congress of 1789; purify
your minds of the suggestions of a transient expediency, and
of a small and local jealousy, by recalling and meditating
anew the grand objects for which you know the Constitution
was framed ; and we cannot diff'er.
If our trivial and timid manufacturing and mechanical arts,
at the organization of the governraent, not much further out
of ground than this premature green grass of the month of
March, were not below the care of such a congress as the first,
how much more worthy of yours is this diversified and yet
sensitive industry, which sends its roots and branches every
where, but which a storm or a frost would prostrate and kill
in an hour ! Is that vast circle of employments, vvhich gives
to more than 800,000 operatives the means of a comfortable
and respectable life ; in which nearly^ three hundred millions
of capital are invested directly; which supplies one tenth of
all our exports, more in value than the export of rice and
tobacco together ; feeds our coasting trade, a nation's best
trade, or certainly our best ; animates, in a hundred ways, the
sister or the parent art of agriculture, by keeping up its prices,
by turning away from its cultivation the crowds who would
overstock it, and by opening to its great staples of cotton,
rice, flour, raeats, and wool, a raarket at home, steady, grow
ing, sure ; which policy, or unkindness, or the storms of war,
cannot close — is that too inconsiderable in the mass of the
national policy to deserve your regard ? And yet, is that
interest by the side of England anything more than an infant,
which her statesraen and capitalists coolly talk of " stifling in
the cradle," and which thrives and lives by your care alone ?
If forty years ago, when we had a continent to plant, and so
few to do it, and with a whole ocean unoccupied, occupied
only for war, inviting us to go forth and carry on the com
merce of the world with scarcely a competitor, sound policy
was thought to require the establishment of this industry, how
much more now, when we have arrived at the period in the
course of national advanceraent in which it should, in the pro
cess of things, begin to take root, and when the condition of

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. Ig3
all our other occupations so irapressively urges us to raake
the most of this for the benefit of all ? If the exhausting im
portations of foreign goods, the overwhelming accumulation
of foreign debt, the drain of specie to pay the foreign credi
tor, the derangement of American currency, the transporta
tion of Araerican produce in foreign ships, the antagonist
regulations of foreign policy, and the consequent depression of
all employments, were reasons for making the Constitution,
are not the sarae things a reason to-day for adrainistering it
in its whole energy "? If so many successive presidents, con
gresses, administrations, have invited, aye, compelled the in
vestraent of so much capital in this industry, and connected
the labors, hopes, the daily livelihood, the whole scherae of
life of so raany thousands, their own, their children's, inextri
cably with it, does it not irapose the duty of steady, just, and
parental protecting legislation on you "? Did you really raean
in 1833, when you fraraed the Corapromise Act, that if, unex
pectedly, Araerican industry, or one single branch of it, could
not live under its ultimate reduction, to let it perish ? We
told you then that it would endanger the whole systera of
domestic labor, and that sorae portions, and they the most
precious, the most popular, the first in favor from the date of
the government, — woollens, the production of wool, the manu
factures of leather, paper, glass, sugar, iron, hats, wood, cotton
printing, the whole cotton manufacture in the hands of moder
ate capitalists, — would be destroyed by it. You differed from
us ; but do you not raean to adrait us to the proof, that our
predictions were true ? Your coraproraise does not prevent
your replenishing the treasury of the government ; shall it
prevent your protecting the labor of the people? Will you
suffer the country to lose in a year all that it has slowly gained
in twenty ? Will you squander away the skill which has been
acquired ; break up your raachinery, or send it to the East
Indies ; close the door to a hundred useful occupations just as
raen have learned how to pursue thera ; put your whole scale
of prices, — ^ which the establishment of every manufacture at
home has regularly reduced and steadied, — into the hands of
the experimental capitalists of England, to lower and raise at
their pleasure ? No, Sir ; no. Sir. You will hear the proofs
and the discussion with patience ; and you will decide with
wisdom.

l£4i SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Let me say, Mr. President, in a spirit of the utmost respect
to the opinions of senators, that, if there is any power qf the
Constitution, — I do not know that there is any, — which it
raight be prudent to suffer to slumber, and, as I have heard it
expressed, to die out, it is not this. No, Sir. Desirous always,
and determined to administer it moderately, discreetly, justly ;
throwing no hurden of discrimination on the South which the
North does not at least equally feel ; keeping the aggregate
amount which it shall yield to the treasury in subordination to
the wants of government, efficiently and wisely administered ;
clothing it, if that is preferred, under the forms, the name,
and the reality, of a measure of revenue with discriminations
for protection, giving all up but the practical, sufficient, and
sure protecting energy itself ; — that I would never give up.
No, Sir ; the power which this whole country with one voice
demanded to have inserted in the Constitution, and which they
hailed as another Declaration of Independence ; the power by
which we are able to protect all our children of labor, on
whatsoever fields they wipe the sweat from their brow ; by
which, as Washington foretold, we raay hope to bind these
States together, to run the race of freedom, power, enjoyment,
and glory with the nations, and to afford the example of a
people, now counted by millions, every one of whom has work
to do, and good pay for his work ; — this power must not be
surrendered, raust not sleep, till the Union flag shall be hauled
down frora the last raasthead ! That sight, I trust, neither
we nor our children, to the thousandth generation, are dooraed
to see.

SPEECH ON THE QUESTION OF ANNULLING THE
CONVENTION FOR THE COMMON OCCUPATION OF
THE TERRITORY OF OREGON; AND IN REPLY TO
MR. BUCHANAN.
DELIVERED IN THB SENATE OF THB UNITED STATES, MAECH 21, 1844.

[The third article of the Convention between the United States and
Great Britain, signed October 20, 1818, is in these words: —
" It is agreed that any country that may be claimed by either party on the
north-west coast of America, westward of the Stony Mountains, shall, together
with its harbors, bays, and creeks, and the navigation of all rivers within the
same, be free and open for the term of ten years from the date of the signature
of the present Convention, to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two
powers ; it being well understood, that this agreement is not to be construed to
the prejudice of any claim which either ofthe two high contracting parties may
have to any part of the said country, nor shall it be taken to affect the claims
of any other power or state to any part of the said country ; the only object of
the high contracting parties in that respect being to prevent disputes and dif
ferences among themselves."
The Convention between the same governments, signed August 6,
1827, is in these words : —
" Art. 1. All the provisions ofthe third article ofthe Convention concluded
between the United States of America and His Majesty the King of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, on the 20th of October, 1818, shall be,
and they are hereby, further indefinitely extended and continued in force, in
the same manner as if all the provisions of the said article were herein specifi
cally recited.
" Aet. 2. It shall be competent, however, to either of the contracting parties,
in case either should think fit, at any time after the 20th of October, 1828, on
giving due notice of twelve months to the other contracting party, to annul and
abrogate this Convention ; and it shall, in such case, be accordingly entirely
annulled and abrogated, after the expiration ofthe said term of notice.
" Art. 3. Nothing contained in this Convention, or in the third article ofthe
Convention of the 20th October, 1818, hereby continued in force, shall be con
strued to impair or in any manner affect the claims which eitl^er of the contract
ing parties may have to any part of the country westward of the Stony Moun
tains." 11*

126 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
On the Sth of January, 1844, Mr. Semple, of Illinois, introduced into
the Senate of the United States the following resolution : —
" Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to give
notice to the British Government that it is the desire of the Government ofthe
United States to annul and abrogate the provisions of the third article of the
Convention concluded between the Government of the United States of Amer
ica and His Britannic Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, on the 20th of October, 1818, and indefinitely' continued
by the Convention between the same parties, signed at London the 6th of
August, 1827."
In opposition to this resolution, Mr. Choate addressed the Senate on
the 22d of February, in reply to Mr. Atchison, of Missouri. The
debate was continued by Messrs. Hannegan, Breese, and Buchanan,
in favor of the resolution, and Messrs. Dayton, Miller, Archer, Crit
tenden, and Rives, against it ; after which, this speech was deliv
ered.]
Mr. Peesident, —
It is not my purpose to discuss this subject, at large, over
again. I have been once heard on it; and, with you all, I
have a very strong desire to bring such a dangerous and un
seasonable debate to a close. A few words in explanation and
aid of what I said before, seem, however, to have been made
necessary by the speeches of the advocates of the resolution.
I acknowledge an anxiety to define and restate plainly,
briefly, and directly, the position which ,1 actually assumed
upon this business. Without supposing any intention to mis
represent, which can never exist here, sure I am that no human
being could forra any tolerable conjecture of its nature, limits,
and grounds, from all the replies, solemn, fervid, and sarcastic,
that have been made to it.
Sir, ray view of this raatter was, and is, simply and exactly
this : not that we should now determine that we will never
give the notice to annul the convention ; for who can say that
we may not be required to give it in six months ? — but that we
should not give the notice now. Whether we shall ever give
it, when and with what accorapaniraents of preparation, and of
auxiliary action we shall do so, I said were raatters very fit for
a coraraittee to consider, or for events to be allowed to develop.
Possibly the course of events might render such notice forever
unnecessary. There was nothing in the past or the present to
indicate the contrary with certainty. Let us await then, I
suggested, the admonitions of events, as they should be uttered

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 1<27
from time to time, keeping always a sharp look-out on Oregon,
which a noiseless and growing current of agricultural imrai
gration was filling with hands and hearts the fittest to defend
it. This was my view ; that is to say, that the notice should
not be given now. Towards that single point all that was
urged was made to bear, and upon that all was meant to tell.
And this view met the whole question before us. What is
that question'? Not whether the notice shall be given now or
never given at all. Not so. The alternative is not between
now giving it, and never giving it; but between giving it now,
and not giving it now. That is the single point of diff'erence.
Senators upon the other side would annul the convention to
day ; we would not annul it to-day ; and there we stop. The
duties of to-raorrow we can better discern and better perforra
by the lights "of to-raorrow.
It is palpable, Mr. President, upon this bare restatement of
the question, that much which made the matter of the speech
of the honorable Senator frora Pennsylvania, [Mr. Buchanan,]
much perhaps which I said myself, was not very immediately
or decisively relevant ; certainly not very necessary to a suit
able determination of/ it. He raay be right or he raay be
wrong in unfolding hiraself with so much emphasis against
what he is pleased to call a poetical and a self-deceiving theory
of policy ; I may have been right, or may have been wrong in
calculating so sanguinely on the unassisted enterprise and the
restless nature of ray countryraen ; I raay have been right, or
raay have been wrong in supposing that those mysterious ten
dencies and energies that have carried our people to the eastern
base of the Rocky Mountains would not die away there, as sum
mer-evening waves on the shore, but would carry them, with
your aid or without it, to the great sea ; the honorable Senator
may or may not be right in predicting that Great Britain will
develop sorae new motive and new form of resistance to our
occupation of the Oregon, or that the Hudson's Bay Company
will take up sorae new or some old habit of Indian butcheries
to keep us out ; you may think what you will on all this, and
yet you have not settled nor very closely approached the ques
tion-, whether the notice of abrogation shall now be given un
der the actual, special, temporary, and passing circurastances
of the case and the hour.

1£8 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Returning to that, the only question, I stand as I stood,
upon one single, sufficient, and decisive reason against the
notice ; and that is, that it may by possibility produce an in
auspicious effect upon the negotiation just now beginning or
begun ; and therefore, as you have maintained this convention
for the peaceful and common occupation of the Oregon Terri
tory for six-and-twenty years, under all administrations, in all
aspects of facts, steadily and with great unanimity of opinion,
as a part of your entire Oregon policy ; as there is nothing
whatever in the past or the present to disclose any necessity
for annulling it, or any ground of reasonable expectation of
benefit frora doing so ; as it hqs operated and is operating
well for you to-day, — it ought not, on the eve of negotiation,
to be abruptly and capriciously abrogated. Such an act may,
by possibility, prevent a treaty. It may diminish the chances
of a treaty. It cannot help negotiation, and it raay erabarrass
and break it up. For this single reason, without another, I
opposed and oppose the resolution.
And what does the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania
say to this ? Why, that the Senator frora Massachusetts has
declared that we have slept upon our rights for twenty-six
years ; and that therefore, while we are about it, we raay as
well have a little raore sleep, a little raore slumber, and a little
more folding of the hands to sleep !
Now, Sir, let me respectfully tell the honorable Senator that
this is not even a good caricature of my reasoning. It is
quite idle, I know, to complain that an opponent does not re
state the position which he assails in exactly the terms in
which it was propounded ; and yet I always thought it a
pleasing and honorable thing which I have heard said of an
eminent debater in the British house of commons, and also
of a late accoraplished member of the Araerican legal profes
sion, that they would reannounce the arguraent to which they
were replying, better than its author had expressed it, before
they proceeded to deraolish it irreparably. But this. Sir, of
the honorable Senator, tried by the rules of the noble art of
logical and parliaraentary caricature, is a bad one. I made no
such assertion, and deduced no such inference. I said not one
word of our having slept on our rights six-and-twenty years,
or six-and-twenty minutes, if by sleeping on rights I am to

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. IgQ
understand the neglecting to assert and proclaim them. I was
speaking of this convention for coraraon occupation, and I said,
and said only, and exactly, that upon this convention you had
stood, all parties, all adrainistrations, from 1818 to this hour,
as a part of your entire Oregon policy ; that you had done so
with a knowledge of every fact which is now urged as a rea
son of annulling it ; and that therefore to annul it now, when
its practical operation is better for you than ever before it was,
and when a negotiation is just beginning, (to carry you in
good temper through which was one of the leading induce
ments to making and continuing it,) would be a capricious,
unintelligible, and unwise proceeding. This is what I said.
With sleeping on your rights I never taunted you. Every
body knows that we have not slept on them. Everybody
knows that we have recorded thera ; announced thera to Great
Britain, and to the world ; urged them in every diplomatic
conversation we have had with that government since we
knew there was a Colurabia River ; and that we made and re
newed this very convention with an express protestation and
provision that it should not impair nor change thera. Sir, let
me, the raore completely to satisfy the honorable Senator of
his misapprehension of the reraark to which he excepted, do
so unusual a thing as to read frora "The Congressional Globe,"
a brief extract frora a speech which I had the honor to make
in this place at the last session : —
" Always this question of the Oregon has borne exactly the same rela
tion to all our questions with England that it bore last summer. Always
it has been thought important enough to be discussed with other subjects,
and never has it been quite matured for adjustment, and never thought
quite so important as to hinder the adjustment of other questions which
were matured. How many treaties have you made with England, — how
much diplomatic conversation have you had with her since Captain Gray
discovered and named the Columbia River? And yet, through the whole
series — in 1807, 1814, 1816, 1818, and 1826, —in the administrations
of both the last Presidents, always there has been one course and one
result with this subject. It has been treated of; formal and informal com
munications have been held on it ; it has been found to be unripe for set
tlement ; and it has been found to be, or believed to be, not difficult
enough, or not pressing enough, to delay or alter the settlement of riper
and more pressing elements of contention."
Sir, while I hold this book open, let me digress a moraent
to correct another raisapprehension into which the honorable

130 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Senator inadvertently fell, not at all affecting, it is true, the
immediate discussion. Eager as he was to show that the
American government had never slept upon our rights, be
cause this seemed to controvert a position I had never taken,
he could not deny himself the pleasure of conjecturing that in
1 842 the then Secretary of State had proposed the parallel of
49° north as the boundary ; and this conjecture he founded
wholly upon a sentence contained in the speech from which I
have just been reading. The sentence is this : —
" I desired chiefly to assure the Senator and the senate that the appre
hension intimated by him, that a disclosure of these informal communica
tions would disgrace the American Secretary, by showing that he had
offered a boundary line south of the parallel of forty-nine, is totally un
founded. He would be glad to hear me say that I am authorized and
desired to declare, that in no communication, formal or informal, was such
an offer made, and that none such was ever meditated."
Frora this he infers that the degree of 49 was proposed.
Certainly, Sir, his inference is wholly groundless. The facts
are these. The Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Benton,] whom
the senate with a general and sincere pleasure have seen
resurae his seat this morning, had at the last session made a
speech, the raain effort of which was to prove that Great Brit
ain had no color of title, at least south of 49°. He did not,
certainly, concede her title so far as 49°, but his argument
was alraost exclusively directed to a vindication of the Ameri
can title up to that parallel ; that is, to the whole valley of the
Columbia River. In the course of his reraarks he observed
that our governraent had steadily refused to concede a particle
of right to Great Britain south of 49°, but that he feared that
a proposition had been raade by the American negotiator of
the treaty of 1842 to fall below that degree ; and thereupon
he used this language, which I read from " The Congressional
Globe : " " And now if, after all this, any proposition has been
made by our governraent to give up the north bank of the
river, I for one shall not fail to brand such a proposition with
the name of treason."
The object of his denunciation, the senate perceive, was a
supposed proposition to run a line south of 49°. Of any
proposition to adopt 49° itself, or any higher parallel, he was
not thinking, and did not speak. Intending to participate in

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 131
that discussion, I addressed a note to the Secretary of State,
inquiring simply whether a proposition had been made to take
a line south of the 49th degree"? The answer was iraraediate,
and to the precise question, that none such had been made or
meditated. Not another syllable was said or written ; and the
writer of neither note, I may venture to say, intended to ask
or answer anything but the precise question, or had any other
subject in his mind at all. 1 well remember that when this
was announced, in the terms which the honorable senator has
read, the Senator frora Missouri audibly expressed his satis
faction. Surely those terms, upon this explanation, cannot be
thought to afford the slightest evidence that this government
proposed the 49th degree for a boundary; and I have been
recently assured, and from high authority, that such is not the
fact. Returning from this digression. Sir, and taking leave, once
and for all, ofthe treaty of 1842, I may repeat that the asser
tion which I actually made in debate the other day was only,
that we have continued this convention as a raeans of enabling
us, in one mode or another, to secure and enforce those very
rights in the Oregon Territory which we have always asserted.
We have kept up the convention, not because we were asleep,
but because we were awake. All the reasons now urged by
senators for abrogating it we have known perfectly well, and
long ago. In 1818, we made the convention. In 18275 we
renewed it. In 1829, in February, just upon the accession of
General Jackson, that celebrated letter of Messrs. Clark and
Cass to the Senator frora Missouri [Mr. Benton] was written,
frora which is derived the fact, thrice repeated, I believe, by
the honorable Senator frora Pennsylvania, that five hundred of
our citizens, hunters, traders, and trappers, have been raurdered
by Indians among and on each side of the Rocky Mountains,
and about the upper Missouri and Mississippi, and perhaps
by the instigation of British traders. That letter was written
then. This fact was raade known to congress and the country
then; yet you did not abrogate the convention. In 1838,
the Hudson's Bay Corapany obtained a renewal of its charter
for twenty years, the British governraent reserving, however,
the right, as against the company, of colonizing the territory
embraced by the charter; which is another of the honorable

132 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Senator's reasons for abrogation. This was six years ago, in
Mr. Van Buren's terra ; yet you did not abrogate it. In 1839,
during the same administration, elaborate reports were made
to congress from the department for Indian Affairs, upon the
precise subject on which the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Allen]
has called for and obtained information at this session, to wit:
the practice of the British government and British companies
to make presents to Indians residing within our territory, and
their general Indian policy, its principles, and its workings^
This whole subject was fully laid open before you then, and
yet you did not abrogate the convention. Ten years ago,
just as well as to-day, you knew that our hunters and trappers
could not and did not contend successfully with the Hudson's
Bay Company for the furs of the Oregon. Yet you did not
abrogate it.
So true it is. Sir, that without a particle of evidence of one
single new reason against the convention, — without producing
one single fact not perfectly well known for years, — senators
now, — -now, just when, upon the proofs which I have laid
and shall lay before you, it is conclusively evinced that the
convention is operating in your favor in the Oregon far more
energetically and far raore palpably than ever before, multi
plying your nurabers, extending your influence, — now, too,
just when for the first tirae you are able to sit down to a
negotiation on this single subject, diserabarrassed of all other
elements of controversy, — ¦ this well-chosen moraent is that
which senators seize on to take the first step towards abroga
tion. I said the thing was incomprehensible and capricious;
and I say so still.
So much in correction of the misapprehension of the hon
orable Senator.
Well, then, why would the honorable Senator give the notice
of abrogation ?
Sir, he tells you why. It is to induce Great Britain to
raake a good Oregon treaty. It is for the sake of influencing
that government to do what it would not do without. If you
do not give the notice, he will risk his life that she will not
give you a good treaty. If you do, she will or she may.
This is his exact and exquisite reason.
But, Sir, when we, wondering aud incredulous, ask how

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 133
the notice is to exert so desirable an influence upon Great Brit
ain, the honorable Senator seems to me to become far less ex
plicit than could be wished, or than was to have been expected.
What is the precise inforraation which the notice is to give
her ? What is it to tell her that we raean to do 1 The hon
orable Senator does not say. I miss something here of his
habitual directness and clearness of speech, and frankness of
explanation. May I not even coraplain of this? True, we
have no great difficulty in making out the ominous and ener
getic meaning of the notice. We make out well enough, upon
the whole, that it is a declaration that unless within a year
Great Britain yields a satisfactory treaty, we will at the end of
that time assert by force the exclusive occupation of the con
tested region. This we see. But we have to make it out by
argument and inference, and by putting this part of the speech
of the honorable Senator with that part, and reasoning up from
consequences to causes. Sir, I complain of this. Surely, surely
in a matter of such transcendent importance, those who influ
ence the public councils and hold the public fortunes in their
hands owe the country the utmost possible frankness and
truthfulness of dealing. This notice, in the opinion of all here,
is to work a great change in your relations to one of the first
Powers in the world; it is to modify a pending negotiation, on
the course and issue of which raany anxious hearts, many vast
and delicate interests, are suspended ; it may in its results
leave you in all things worse than it found you : it may give
you, for peace, a sword. Then, Sir, you owe to the people
,the most unreserved declaration of your opinion of its exact
and entire meaning ; of the exact extent and nature of the
information which it conveys to Great Britain ; of the degree,
and the way in which it commits you ; of how far and in what
direction it engages your pride and honor to go, if it does not
happen to produce the treaty which you expect. Sir, this
business of war and peace is the people's business. All
measures legislative in their nature, as you assurae this to be,
at all tending to endanger the state of peace, are for thera to
judge on, from the beginning to the end. Yes, Sir, this all is
their business. It is the business of the farmer, preparing to
scatter his seed with tears, and looking forward to the harvest
when he may come bearing his sheaves with joy, his happy
VOL. II. 12

134 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
household unsevered around him ; it is the business of the
planter ; it is the business of the merchant in his counting-
room, projecting the enterprises that bind the nations together
by a thousand ties ; it is the business of the fisherman on the
deck of his nigh night-foundered skiff"; of the minister of the
gospel, and of all good men ; of the widowed mother with her
sailor child, the only son of his raother, and she a widow, the
stay and staff" of her declining age, whom the stern call of
a country in arms raay sumraon to the deck on which his
father has fallen ; it is their business ! and if we deal fairly
and frankly with thera, excellently well will they perforra it !
Nevertheless, Sir, it must be admitted that senators tell us
enough to enable us to interpret the whole language which the
notice speaks to Great Britain. It is exactly this: give us the
Oregon by a treaty, or in a year we will take it ourselves,-: —
for the honorable Senator informs us that it is to apprise the
British government " that we at last are in earnest." In
earnest, indeed ! Well, what may that mean ? Does not the
Senator himself insist upon it, that we have been continually
asserting our rights, by diploraacy and otherwise, for six-and-
twenty years ; that we have never slept upon them an hour ;
that, in and out of congress, we have been " earnestly agitat
ing" the question, and "earnestly urging" an adjustment of
it"? When he advises, therefore, to a new measure, which
shall admonish England that we are indeed and at last in ear
nest, he ineans that it shall announce something more than con
tinued assertion of title on paper, — more than the harmless
and vain quart and tierce of diplomatic conflict ; he means
that it shall tell her we have talked enough, and written
enough; we now mean to act. I arrive at the same con
clusion by an analysis of other portions of the Senator's argu
ment. Great Britain, he says, will make no treaty while she
retains possession and enjoyment, as now she does, of all she
wants. She has the whole country now; and what more
should she desire, and how can she improve her case by a
treaty"? We must tell her, then, he urges, that she shall no
longer continue to have all or anything that she desires ; that
the existing status raust and shall be displaced ; that the pos
session is to change hands, if ,she does not treat in a twelve
month. Certainly, this is reasonably clear, after all ; and I

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. I35
wonder only, that what is so palpably meant should not have
been more directly said.
Then, Sir, the proposition is to induce an unwiUing govern
ment to give us what we seek, by notice publicly corarauni
cated, that if it is not given we will take it.
Now, Sir, on one point we shall all agree ; and it is, that
this raode of influencing the diploraacy of a foreign govern
ment, by announcing in advance what shall be the conse
quences of certain determinations which it may adopt, is a
thing to be pretty delicately handled. It is a prescription to
be given in minute quantities, very minute quantities indeed.
Homoeopathic doses I think they should be. The patient
should scarcely know what he takes, and the matter should be
altogether between him and his confidential physician. Skil
fully administered, it may do good ; clumsily done, it is many
thousand tiraes worse than nothing. I said, therefore, on a
forraer occasion that, since this raatter of intimating anticipated
consequences to a government you treat with, is one of so
much delicacy ; since a blunder in regard to it might produce
results which two nations, which the world, might have cause
long and unavailingly to regret ; since we hold in our hands,
not sticks and straws, nor yet raore precious yet perishable
things, as silver and gold, but the lives of raen, — our more
than material interests, our glory, our history ; I thought that,
in this view, good sense and prudence prescribed that we
should leave this suggestion of consequences to be employed
in some way in which it raight work all the good of which it
is intrinsically capable, with as little as possible of the evil
from which it can scarcely be kept wholly free. I advised,
therefore, and now advise, that it be all intrusted to the Ameri
can negotiator, the Secretary of State. Let him deal with it.
Let him, if he thinks fit, according to the courtesies of a firm
diplomacy, enable the British minister to see the whole ground
before him. Sir, we know from the papers of this raorning
who is the American Secretary. We know hira. I am will
ing to commit this matter, and all else which is involved in
this negotiation of Oregon, to that rapid and decisive intellect,
that iron nerve, and energetic will. In his hands, this delicate
suggestion raay be usefully administered. In ours, published
as it is proposed to be by legislative resolution to the world ;

136 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
discharged as from a battery upon the new rainister as he
comes ashore, how can it fail to be wholly mischievous ?
Disregarding all such sublunary considerations as these, the
honorable Senator from Pennsylvania thinks it of no impor
tance how this raedicine is given ; for England, says he, has
no right to complain ; the very convention itself reserves the
power to either party to annul it at will upon a twelvemonth's
notice ; and she has no right or title at all to the country of
Oregon. Why should she complain, then, of our giving a
notice we have a right to give, and of our driving her from
a place where she has no right to be ? Nay, he seemed to
think, that when I intimated a suggestion that the proceeding
might, by giving off"ence, destroy one chance, were it but one
in ten thousand of our chances for a treaty, I manifested
something like a sensitiveness for English honor and for the
sake of England.
Now, Sir, all this is well enough for the smartness of de
bate ; but it does not touch, nor begin to touch, the difficulty.
The question is not whether Great Britain deserves to be
threatened, or deserves to be whipped, but whether the men
ace or the fulfilment will or will not diminish your chances of
obtaining a treaty 1 It is a treaty which you say you desire.
It is a treaty which the Senator frora Pennsylvania desires.
It is a treaty he is prescribing for. With this in view, is it
wise or foolish to begin by putting the other party into a pas
sion 1 Whether would you rather treat with a good-natured
or an angry governraent? You say the forraer, of course.
Well, is not an unreasonable passion as bad to treat with as a
reasonable one? Will not a threat, felt to be deserved, or
actually deserved, place the threatened party in as unpropitious
a mood and situation for sweet-tempered, courteous, and ra
tional diplomacy, as a threat wholly undeserved 1 What is
the operation of all menace ? Why, it puts the object of it
in a condition in which he cannot do what he would, and what
he feels to be right, lest he be subjected to the iraputation of
acting frora fear. The justice or injustice of the menace itself
does not help or hurt the matter.
It is of no sort of consequence, therefore, whether Great
Britain has a right to take offence or not. I mean that it is
of no consequence to your objects and your interests. It is of

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 137
you, not of her, that I am thinking ; it is for you, for our
constituents, for our country, for our peace, our honor, our
fortunes, I am anxious, not hers ; and it is that you may ac
quire what you seek and what you deserve, that I counsel you
not to lessen your chances of a treaty by a raenace — no, nor
by any act or declaration which may by reasonable possibility
be so interpreted. I hope I may caution my child not to
rouse with his little whip a sleeping irritable animal, without
being told that I care rauch about the dog, and little about ray
son. For your own objects, with a prudent and useful selfish
ness, avoid the appearance of this thing.
Sir, we must distinguish. If any other conceivable purpose
was expected to be served by this notice than that of inducing
Great Britain to give us a treaty, you would not so rauch
regard its possible eff"ect on her temper. You might give the
notice for its other objects, and for its other operation ; and
you might say that you would not presume, or, in considera
tion of other benefits, that you could afford to disregard, un
reasonable ill-nature. But you observe, that the honorable
Senator from Pennsylvania urges the notice as a mode, and an
indispensable raode, of getting a treaty. This is exactly and
all the good it is to do. If it will not do that, if it is not
certain that it will do that, if it raay do more harra than
good in that precise regard ; if, reasonably or not, it may by
possibility be misinterpreted, then, on the very principles
upon which it is proposed, you will refuse to burn your fin
gers with it.
But the honorable Senator agrees that we should not raen
ace. If this raay probably and not wholly unreasonably be
taken as a raenace, then he agrees it is not to be given. Well,
is it not one ? Is it not certain that it would be so taken \
Sir, the learning of threats is not recondite nor difficult. I
well reraember a reading on the title, by the honorable Senator
himself, in this chamber, at the extra session of 1841. It was
in the debate on the McLeod case, as it was called. The
British rainister had demanded that person, then in a New
York jail, to be given up ; and he did it in these terras :
" But be that as it may, her Majesty's government formally
deraand, on the grounds already stated, the immediate release
of Mr. McLeod; and her Majesty's government entreat the
12*

138 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
President of the United States to take into his most deliberate
consideration the serious nature of the consequences which
must ensue frora a rejection of this demand."
This, Sir, was not the language of the parliament of Great
Britain, speaking to us in the hearing of the whole world.
It was a letter frora a minister to a secretary ; and it was
thought, by some who participated in that debate, that it spoke
apprehension more than menace ; that it meant to shadow out
beforehand a possible, uncontrollable, aud unmanageable pop
ular outbreak, of Whig, Radical, and Tory, which governnient
must obey. Not so the honorable Senator. He said, " What
consequences'? }f7«a^ consequences ? After the denunciations
we had heard in the British parliament, and all that had oc
curred in the course of the previous correspondence, could
anything have been intended but the serious nature of the
consequences which must ensue frora war with England?
And here let rae put a case. I ara so unfortunate as to have
a diff"erence with a friend of raine. I will suppose it to be my
friend from South Carolina, [Mr. Preston]. I know, if you
please, even that I am in the wrong. My friend comes to me
and deraands an explanation, adding, at the same tirae, these
words : If you do not grant the reparation demanded, I en
treat you to consider the serious consequences which must
ensue frora your refusal. Certain I ara there is not a single
member of this senate, I might say not an intelligent man in
the civilized world, who would not consider such language as
a menace, which raust be withdrawn or explained before any
reparation could be made."
Now, Sir, try this case by such a standard and such an
illustration. Great Britain claims a right to the joint and
coramon occupation of the territory from 42° to 54° 40'.
She is wholly in the wrong ; yet she clairas ; she has recorded
and urged her claira ; we have had a great deal of diploraatic
conversation about the raatter ; different lines, it is said, have
been proposed, forraally or inforraally ; there is a sort of
mixed, shifting, anomalous possession, — here for hunting, there
for farming; here by British subjects, there by American;
and elsewhere, or mingled together, by French, half-breeds,
and Indians. To some intimation or other of our rainisters in
1827, the British government declared that it did not mean to

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. I39
colonize ; but that if a forcible effort were made to expel her
subjects, they would be defended.
In this state of things precisely, we by the executive organ
of government propose to Great Britain to settle the whole by
treaty. You are all wrong, we said, but let us treat. Great
Britain agrees to it. Inforraal comraunications pass and re
pass for a year or two ; and at length a British rainister ar
rives, — not a special minister, the Senator from Pennsylvania
assures us, — a general minister, but with no other subject what
ever of importance to attend to than this. This alone of our
British elements of disquiet, this alone, or this mainly, is left.
The negotiation is ready to begin. And let me say that all
this has proceeded thus far, with the fullest knowledge, and
the raost entire virtual acquiescence of the national legislature.
You knew at the last session, you have known frora the first
day of this, perfectly well, that the governraents were nego
tiating on this subject. The President told us so. The chair
man of the coraraittee on foreign aff"airs told you so. Yet
you did not interpose. You passed no resolution forbidding
negotiation, or sketching its course, or erabodying an ultiraa-
tura. You have drawn no red lines or black lines, within or
without which diplomacy shall not come. You have virtually
consented that the whole subject of controversy be treated on,
reserving yourselves to your great constitutional duty of rati
fying or refusing to ratify what negotiation shall propose to
you. But to negotiation you, the legislature, and the execu
tive, agree. To this the Senator frora Pennsylvania agrees.
Well, the negotiators are taking their seats at table ; the
maps are unrolled ; (I hope there are no red lines this time,
traced by king or sage) ; the publicists are doubled down in
dogs ears, and all is ready. In this precise state of things,
the legislature, which in matters of pending and legitimate
negotiation has no more to do than the army or navy, puts its
head out of the window, and, in a voice audible all over the
world, ejaculates, " God speed your labors, messieurs nego
tiators ; treat away ; we are all for a treaty ; we are deeply
anxious to have a treaty ; we are pining for peace, — but hark
ye, of the British side of that table, if you do not give us the
whole subject in dispute, or just as much of it as we desire to
have, we mean to take it by force and main strength, in twelve

140 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
months from this day." I say, Sir, that looking to time,
place, circumstance, to the explanatory speeches and the whole
case, this is the language. And I say, further, it is raenace ;
and nothing but my sincere respect and regard for senators
who propose and urge it prevents my saying, still further, that
it is the raost indecent, indecorous, unintelligible proceeding
the world of civilization ever witnessed.
The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania, in the course of
his able and plausible speech, pressed me with some inconsis
tencies of my arguraent, as he thought thera. Certainly, as he
construed and collated the arguraents, they wore a look of in
consistency ; and I felt, and feel, that they will require, before
I have done, some eff"ort to reconcile them. In the raean time,
will he allow me in turn to ask him whether he and his friends
have not fallen, in the warmth doubtless of discussion, into
sorae pretty remarkable inconsistencies theraselves 1 Sir, I
have been exceedingly struck while listening to gentlemen, and
particularly so perhaps while listening to the Senator from
Pennsylvania, with the fact, that while the ends and objects at
which they aira are all so pacific, their speeches are strewn and
sown thick, broadcast, with so rauch of the food and nourish-
raent of war. Their ends and objects are peace ; a treaty of
peace ; but their means and their topics wear a certain incon
gruous griraness of aspect. The " bloora is on the rye ; " but
as you go near, you see bayonet-points sparkling beneath ; and
are fired upon by a thousand men in ambush ! The end they
aim at is peace ; but the means of attaining it are an offensive
and absurd threat. Their ends and their objects are peace ;
yet how full have they stuffed the speeches we have been hear
ing with every single topic the best calculated to blow up the
passions of kindred races to the fever heat of battle ! The
honorable Senator from Pennsylvania is for peace, but Eng
land is proud, powerful, and greedy; England sends Lord
Ashburton here with a red line in his pocket, and a white lie
in his mouth ; England is pressing on with giant tread to the
occupation of Oregon, in which she has no color of title ; the
English press, high and low, is vilifying, day and night, not
our faults or vices, but all that we love and all that we honor !
Nay, further, by a most unhappy and remarkable raere lapse
of tongue it raust have happened, for the honorable Senator

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 14,1
never forgets to say that he is for peace, he tells us, that while
our cities love England, as I understand hira, a little too rauch,
" not wisely, but too well " — a reraark by the way, cal
culated, not intended, to destroy altogether the influence of the
commercial coraraunity on a question of peace or war — ^so
well as to have toasted the Queen and insulted the President
— the great unsophisticated and honest masses already hate
England with a precious and ancient enraity.
I declare. Sir, that while listening to senators whose sincer
ity and patriotism I cannot doubt, and to this conflict of topics
and objects with which they half bewilder me, I was forcibly
reminded of that consummate oration in the streets of Rome,
by one who " came to bury Csesar, not to praise hira." He
did not wish to stir up anybody to mutiny and rage — oh, no !
He would not have a finger lifted against the murderers of his
and the people's friend — not he ! He feared he wronged
them — yet who has not admired the exquisite address and the
irresistible eff"ect with which he returns again and again to
"sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths," and puts a
tongue in each ; to the familiar raantle, first worn on the even
ing of the day his great friend overcame the Nervii, now
pierced by the cursed steel of Cassius, of the envious Casca,
of the well-beloved Brutus ; to his legacy of drachmas, arbors,
and orchards, to the people of Rome, whose friend, whose
benefactor, he shows to thera, all raarred by traitors — till the
mob break away from his words of more than fire, with —
" We will be revenged : — revenge : about !
Seek — burn — fire — kill — slay 1 — let not a traitor live."
Antony was insincere ; senators are wholly sincere ; yet
the contrast between their pacific professions and that revelry
of belligerent topics and sentiraents which rings and flashes in
their speeches here, half suggests a doubt to rae, sometimes,
whether they or I perfectly know what they mean or what they
desire. They promise to show you a garden, and you look, up
to see nothing but a wall, " with dreadful faces thronged, and
fiery arms ! " They propose to teach you how peace is to be
preserved ; and they do it so exquisitely that you go away half
inclined to issue letters of marque and reprisal to-morrow
morning.

142 SPEECHES m THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
The argument runs somewhat thus, (I do not pretend to use
the exact words of any one : ) " We are for peace, — but
flesh and blood can't stand everything; we are wholly for
peace, — but our emotions almost choke us to death when we
think of their sending Lord Ashburton here with his suppres--
sio veri, and allegatio falsi; we are for peace by all manner of
means, — yet see England laying her mortmain and dishonest
grasp on the Oregon, as she had before on the highland passes
of Maine, enfolding both to her rapacious breast — and bear it
who can ! we want peace, — but hear that ribald and all-libel
ling press', that spares neither age, nor sex, nor the secrets of
the grave ! we want peace, — not that we love England quite
so much as the cities, whose treasures indeed, and whose inter
ests, we hope not all their affections, are more abroad than at
home ; we would have the executive dispositions, if we could,
as sweet and peace-making as our own, — but impartiahty
obliges us to remind hira where, when, and how, his health was
not drunk, and the Queen's was ! We, public men, are all
for peace ; but how long we shall be able to rein in the great
body of the people, stung and maddened by the meraory of so
raany wrongs. Heaven only knows." So runs the argument.
The proposition is peace ; but the audience rises and goes off"
with a sort of bewildered and unpleasing sensation, that if
there were a thousand men in all Araerica as well disposed as
the orator, peace might be preserved; but that, as the case
stands, it is just about hopeless! I ascribe it altogether to
their anxious and tender concern for peace, that senators have
not a word to say about the good she does, but only about the
dangers she is in. They have the love of compassion ; not the
love of desire. Not a word about the countless blessings she
scatters frora her golden urn ; but only " the pity of it, lago !
the pity of it ! " to think how soon the dissonant clangor of a
thousand brazen throats may chase that bloom from her cheek,
" And death's pale flag be quick advanced there."
Sir, no one here can say one thing and raean another; yet
much raay be raeant, and nothing directly said.
" The dial spoke not, but pointed full upon the stroke of murder."
Let rae advert now. Sir, to the raanner in which another

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 143
topic, on which I said something before, has been dealt with
by the honorable Senator. I suggested, that if you decide to
give this notice, the comraittee on foreign relations ought at
once to be directed to inquire whether any and what raeasures
are necessary now to be adopted in view of the expected an-
nulraent of the convention. And ray reason was, that if, un
happily, we should not have a treaty within the year, at the
end of the year our claims and those of the British govern
ment must come into direct and forcible collision on the con
tested territory. The grounds of that apprehension I had the
honor quite in detail to lay before you.
Well, what has been the answer to this ? Why, Oh, never
fear, we shall certainly have a treaty. Beyond that single
and satisfactory ejaculation no one goes an inch.
Novv, Mr. President, this is very well. But as no gentle
raan knows that we shall have a treaty, I press my original
question : what is to come to pass, where are we to be, what
are we to do at the end of a year, with the convention an
nulled and no treaty concluded ? What is the theory of Sena
tors upon such an hypothesis 1 Surely, it is no answer at all
to say we shall have a treaty. We know nothing at all about
it ; we do not know, we cannot guess, whether we shall or
shall not. Since, then, you would have us assume the respon
sibility of our deserting our settled and approved policy in this
behalf, — ¦ since you propose that at the end of a year the con
vention, which has kept the peace of the countries and slow
ly developed the probable destinies of Oregon for twenty-six
years, shall cease to exist, are you not bound to survey the
raatter on all sides, and therefore to answer this question :
Where is Oregon, and where are the countries, when that state
of things arrives and brings, as it may bring, no treaty ?
Sir, it did and does seem to me, that the annulment of the
convention, unaccompanied by treaty, places the governraents
in collision. Your notice is a declaration that in a year, if the
country is not yielded, you will take it. Great Britain has
recorded her declaration, that although she does not propose to
colonize, and although, as I gather, she would not concern her
self in it, if the Hudson's Bay Corapany, the hunter,' and the
garae, should slowly retire to the raore congenial deserts of
the North and North-east, yet, that if you forcibly atterapt to

144 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
dispossess them now, she will oppose force to force. If you
execute your threat, and she executes hers, you certainly are
in collision. If you do not, you will have to retire not very
magnificently from a position up to which you will have very
loftily strutted. Besides, if the convention is abrogated, col
lisions among the settlers, each body of them feeling that they
represent and are backed by their own government, will be
come inevitable ; each government will defend its own ; and
there is a war in the Oregon, whether you designed it or
not. I thought therefore, and now do, that in this view of pos
sible consequences, it is not too soon, if the notice is given, to
begin to inquire whether Oregon is to be defended in Oregon,
or under the walls of Quebec, or on the sea ; and if in the
Oregon, how it is to be done ; by what floating and what sta
tionary force ; at what cost ; and on what ways and means ?
Is there a doubt that England would begin to prepare on the
day of the notice ? With her habits, with her means, under
the apprehensions which the notice would excite, would she
not begin to accumulate and concentrate a preparation which
would enable her to stoop, beak and talons, upon the contested
territory, on the day that the year should expire ? Will you
sit still, and see and hear her preparing ? To give this notice,
then, and go home without raore, were to light a train to the
magazine, and then lie do^vn to sleep upon the deck, which in
half a minute will be shattered to atoms.
Yet senators are so sure of having a treaty, they are so
sure that this proud and grasping power, this power which
" pushes her rights with energy while we sleep on ours," this
power which will not treat at all without a menace, will treat
under raenace ; that she will sweetly yield the whole raatter in
dispute in a year ; that red lines, courtly diplomatic tricks, the
avarice of territory, the drearas of Gibraltars and Maltas on
the north-west coast, the pride of protecting all her subjects
frora what solitary spot of land or sea soever their cries assail
the throne — will all give way ; so sure are they of all this,
that they will not have a committee so much as inquire what
is to be done, if none of these fine things happen to come to
pass !
Sir, my friends and myself are willing to go before the

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 145
country upon this matter. We oppose the notice ; but if you
give it, then, we say, prepare with a rational forecast for the
consequences. Senators on the other side advise the notice,
and resist even inquiry into the expediency of any preparation
at all.
I come at last. Sir, to that part of my previous observa
tions on which the Senator from Pennsylvania has chiefly
diffused himself.
I said, for the purpose of persuading you not to give this
notice now, (for that all along is the whole subject of delibera
tion, — shall it be given now ?) — that over and above the
possible inauspicious influence of the notice upon the negotia
tion, the convention was actually working very well for you in
the Oregon itself. I said, therefore, that so far frora precipi
tating an attempt to abrogate it to-day, it was perhaps not
certain that, you would ever do so, treaty or no treaty. It
would be very proper, at least, I suggfested, that a coraraittee
should inquire what is the actual operation of the convention ;
and whether time, the convention subsisting, did now, and
would hereafter, "fight for you or fight for England?" I said
that, in my view of the ^cts, the actual tendencies of events
were giving you the agricultural portions of Oregon ; and that
there was nothing now in operation in England or Oregon which
was at all counteracting those tendencies. Such was the actual
operation of the convention. And then I said, that although
all this might change ; although England or the Hudson's Bay
Corapany raight put into activity sorae new agencies of counter
action to keep our agricultural settlers out ; yet I did suggest,
that if things-could be left as now they are, to succeed one an
other in their natural course ; if tirae and chance, as now, could
be continued in the control of events ; if collision is not precipi
tated, and blood is not shed ; if exasperated and mad national
will, stimulated to undesigned and unreasonable action, is not
substituted for the natural sequence of things; if the whole could
remain, as now it is, intrusted to the silent operation of those
great laws of business and man, which govern in the moral world
as gravitation araong the stars ; upon this hypothesis, I sug
gested that your people would spread themselves upon the
whole agricultural capacities of Oregon, and the Hudson's Bay
Company, the hunter and the game, would retire to a fitter
VOL. II. 13

146 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
region for that wild pursuit. That this would be so I could
not assert, of course. Over and over again, I said the British
policy might take some new direction. We may brag her into
a change of it. The foolishness of debate may change it. In
point of fact, however, now, for the present, the convention
works well. Continue it, therefore. But keep a constant and
keen lookout upon the Oregon ; and in the mean time, you are
filling it with its appropriate and its natural defenders.
Such, exactly. Sir, was the poetical and self-deceiving policy
which so much amuses the honorable Senator from Pennsyl
vania. Has he adequately met the view I took ? Sir, I think
not. Consider, Sir, first, what is the exact question. It is this : Is
the actual working of tbe convention such, as to afford a reason
for abrogating it sufficiently clear and weighty to induce you to
disregard and take the hazard of those probable inauspicious
influences which the proposed notice would exert upon the
pending negotiation ? The eff"ect of the notice upon negotia
tion, I hope I have shown, would be bad. The argument of
the Senator from Pennsylvania, that notice would help negotia
tion, I hope I have shown, is not sound nor specious. Still
the question arises, does the actual working of the convention
afford a reason, irrespective of the eff"ect of notice upon negotia
tion, for abrogating, or a reason for continuing it ? Does it
aff"ord so, strong a reason for abrogating it, that you should feel
obliged to abrogate it at the expense of a treaty \ I have said,
and repeat, that on the contrary, the convention operates so
favorably, that, without the least regard to the unpropitious
effect of notice upon negotiation, you should not to-day disturb
it. Whether you ever shall, and when you shall, events will
reveal to you.
What, then, is the actual working of the convention ? Are
there tendencies and causes now actually in operation, which
would fill Oregon with your people, if not counteracted ; and
are there counteracting agencies and instrumentalities actually
in operation which overcome those tendencies and causes, and
thus keep your people out % And this. Sir, is a pure question
of fact. It is a question of raere evidence. It is a question
of the past and the present of Oregon. Exaraine it, then, as
such, and by itself. Do not let it be confounded with the

ON OCCUPYING OREGON.

147

very diff'erent, and not very useful question, what is to be the
future of Oregon ? Let not the honorable Senator jump aside
or jump forward from the fact, and exclaim, England will do
this ; the Hudson's Bay Company will do that !
Our business is not to guess about the future ; but to dis
cern the duties of the present, and to fulfil thera. You urge
the abrogation of the convention to-day. See, then, how it
works to-day. If it work well, you are refuted. And if then
you guess it will work badly next year, I say then we can
abrogate it next year.
The first suggestion. Sir, which I made touching the ex
isting state of things was, that causes and tendencies now
actually in operation are filling the agricultural parts of Oregon
with your people ; causes and tendencies which, not counter
acted, will fill those parts with agricultural settlers frora araong
yourselves. There is already kindled and diffused soraething
like a passion for agricultural eraigration to that country.
Springing up and spreading, one knows not how ; not
prorapted, as elsewhere, by hunger, by pauperisra, by the
want of work or wages ; springing rather, perhaps, frora a
craving of personal independence, and an honest old Anglo-
Saxon appetite for land ; stiraulated by our large liberty, and
by the feeling that we have vast tracts of new world to divide
and possess, wherein each raay get his share : the passion
exists, is diffused, is growing, and, in the absence of insuper
able counteracting agencies, will cover the whole agricultural
opportunities of Oregon, as the waters cover the sea. Such,
I said, was the view taken by the friends of the resolution.
A vivid paragraph frora a speech delivered elsewhere well
illustrated this.
" Oregon is our land of promise. Oregon is our land of destination.
'The flnger of Nature' — such were once the words of the gentleman
from Massachusetts, [Mr. Adams,] in regard to this country — ' points
that out.' Two thousand American citizens are already indwellers of her
valleys. Five thousand more — aye, it may be twice that number —
will have crossed the mountain passes, before another year rolls round.
While you are legislating, they are emigrating; and whether you legis
late for them or not, they will emigrate still." — Speech of Mr. Owen, of
Indiana, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States,
January 23rf and 24:th, 1844.
To the sarae effect was the less fervent language of the

148 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES" SENATE.
Senator from Illinois himself, in his speech upon introducing
this resolution.
" The people of the West have not contented themselves with express
ing opinions, — they have acted. For many years our citizens have gone
into the country west of the Rocky Mountains, for the purpose of hunting,
trapping, and trading with the Indians. They have also more recently
gone for the purpose of making perraanent settlements. During the last
year, more than a thousand brave and hardy pioneers set out from In
dependence, in Missouri, and, overcoming all obstacles, have arrived safe
in the Oregon. Thus the flrst attempt to cross the extensive prairies
and high mountains which intervene between the settlements in the
States and the Pacific Ocean has been completely successful. The prairie
wilderness and the snowy mountains, which have heretofore been deemed
impassable, which were to constitute, in the opinion of some, an impene
trable barrier to the further progress of emigration to the West, are
already overcome. The same bold and daring spirits, whose intrepidity
has heretofore overcome the Western wilderness in the midst of dangers,
can never be checked in their march to the shores of the Pacific. During
the next summer I believe thousands will follow. Extensive preparations
are now making for a general move towards that country. The complete
success of those who have flrst gone will encourage others ; and, as the
road is now marked out, I do not think I am at all extravagant when I
suppose that ten thousand emigrants will go to Oregon next summer."
Indeed, I added, the one great fact which, first, last,
everywhere and always strikes you on a review of our his
tory, is the noiseless, innumerous movement of our nation
westward. Setting off" two centuries ago from Jamestown and Ply
mouth, we have spread to the Alleghanies ; we have topped
them ; we have diffused ourselves over the iraperial valley
beyond ; we have crossed the Father of Rivers ; the granite
and ponderous gates of the Rocky Mountains have opened,
and we stand in sight of the great sea. He whose childhood
learned his raother's tongue from her loved lips, in the utmost
North and East, speaks it to-day in the tones of a raan on the
shores of the Pacific; speaks it to teach the truths and con
solations of religion and of culture to the wasted native race;
speaks it there, and is still at horae ! unexpatriated, unalien
ated, his " heart, untravelled," still turning to you ! In this
fact, recorded and exemplified by all our history, there was
revealed a law of growth, which, in the absence of counteract
ing causes, would fill all that was worth filling of the country
in dispute.

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 1 49
Such was the first of the facts I urged which make up the
actual present of this question of Oregon.
And, now, what does the honorable Senator frora Pennsyl
vania say to this ? Does he controvert it, or any part of it ?
Certainly not. Does he doubt the existence of a formed, dif
fused passion for emigrating to Oregon ? Not he, indeed I
Does he doubt the agricultural capacities of the country ? I
understand hira to go the whole length of his friends, the
friends of this resolution, in their high estiraate of those
capacities. Does he deride and disbelieve the law which
seems to conduct our star of empire westward ? Oh no !
Hear him : —
" He believed that the system of law and of social order we enjoyed
was destined to be the inheritance of this continent. For this it was that
the Almighty had put within this entire nation that spirit of progress, and
that disposition to roam abroad and seek out new homes and new fields
of enterprise. It could not be repressed ; it was idle to talk of it ; you
might as well arrest the stars in their course through heaven. The same
Divine hand gave irapulse to both. Stop the American people from
crossing the Rocky Mountains ! You might as well command Niagara
not to flow. We had a destiny, and it would be fulfilled."
Sir, how poor, flat, spiritless, prosaic, was all I said, to
this ! He talk of my poetry, indeed ! Why, corapared with
these arrow flights, these eagle flights, of the soaring Senator,
I crept upon the ground ; I abased rayself ; I lay flat on my
face ; I hid my head in the hurable reeds !
No wonder, indeed,. that the topic inspires him. Yet it
has its sad and fearful aspects, too, on which we may, and
soon, have cause to dwell.
Tendencies and causes then in actual operation are conduct
ing your people to the occupation of the whole agricultural
Oregon. The next question is, are there any counteracting
agencies actually operating to check and restrain these ten
dencies and causes, and thus to keep your people out ? Is the
British government and nation now doing anything, is the
Hudson's Bay Company now doing anything, to prevent set
tlers frora among yourselves taking up the entire agricultural
capacities of that far West ?
Beginning, then, with the British government and nation
at home, as distinct from the Hudson's Ba;y Corapany, whose
policy requires to be separately exarained, I said, and say, that
13*

150 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
upon all the evidence to which I have access, and to which you
all and all the world have equal access, there is no proof what
ever that that governraent and nation are doing anything which
operates in the slightest degree to keep out or to erabarrass
our agricultural eraigration to Oregon. Do not lose sight of
the question. That question is, what is the existing state of
things ? What is that government doing now ? Three years,
six months, the next packet, may change everything. But
what is going on now %
In the first place, then, I said, and repeat, that I see no
proof that that government and nation, or any party or asso
ciation or. individual of the British nation at horae, are now
carrying on the agricultural colonization of Oregon ; or do
now, or ever did, cherish the purpose of colonizing it, or any
part of it, for objects of agriculture.
Sorae proofs and considerations having a tendency to evince
that no such thing is doing, and that no such purpose is cher
ished, were then adverted to. In 1827 Mr. Gallatin, in a
letter to the Araerican Secretary of State, observes, that the
British negotiators declared " there was no intention on the
part of Great Britain to colonize the country (of the Colum
bia) or impede the progress of American settleraent." And
then, through all that series of colonization and emigration
enterprise, beginning in Great Britain in 1826, perhaps as far
back as 1815, by which the British government under successive
adrainistrations, and by which associations of private persons,
and by which wise and feeling individual minds, have sought
to relieve the over-pressure of population at home by opening
new fields of British labor and new markets of British goods
abroad — an enterprise which has excited so much interest
and caused so much discussion in parliaraent and by the press
— an enterprise which has carried many hundreds of thousands
of voluntary emigrants to every spot almost of British earth, —
to Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope, the
Canadas, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and all the isles of
the sea — in the whole history of this enterprise, nobody has
proposed to colonize the Oregon, and nobody has taken a step
that way. The necessity of colonization on the largest scale
has been adraitted. It has been forced upon the British public
mind. It is most energetically and successfully acted upon.

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 151
Colonies are rising everywhere ; new fields and new shops of
British labor ; new markets of British raanufactures ; new in
vestments of British capital, benefiting him who emigrates and
him who stays at home ; stimulating British production ;
" putting the full breast of youthful exuberance to the raouth
of the exhausted parent." Yet no huraan being has emigrated
or meditated emigration, that I can see, to the Oregon. The
advantages and disadvantages of all these seats of colonization
have been repeatedly and warmly discussed in parliament, and
by the whole press, high and low, but not one word that I can
find has been spoken or written of the Oregon. I referred to
a catalogue of books coming under the general denomination
of "Emigrants' Guides," just published in London, in which
the roving English reader raay find soraething to induce hira
to go to alraost every other spot on earth or sea, and to show
hira the way to it, but not a puff" and not a direction for Ore
gon. In no paper put forth by the governraent, or any asso
ciation of persons ; in no speech, in no book, in no act of any
description, or of anybody, do I see a particle of proof of the
existence of a design to settle that country for agriculture or
for anything. Indeed, when you consider of how vast a colo
nial territory Great Britain is the adraitted exclusive proprietor,
— a territory on which her descendants may go on for ages
spreading to hundreds of millions ; a territory raore accessi
ble and towards which the current of emigration is already
running ; on which the foundations of new States are already
traced, andthe structures going up, — it is not strange that she
has not directed her wandering steps to this last horaeof raan,
where she does not pretend to own an acre by an exclusive
title, and to which we are known to deny her any title at
all. Well, Sir, how does the Senator meet this ? Why, he says
Great Britain must colonize. " What ! " he exclairas, " not
colonize '? It is the indispensable condition of her existence ;
she must colonize." Certainly, Sir. So I had the honor to
say. But she raust not colonize the top of Mont Blanc ; and
she raust not colonize the dorae of St. Paul's church, that I
ara aware of; and whether she is colonizing or raeditates
colonizing the agricultural parts or any parts of Oregon, is a
pure and sheer question of fact, to be settled by the proofs.

152 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Returning, then, to the proofs, the Senator has produced
nothing but the renewal of the Hudson's Bay Company's char
ter, in which is reserved a right to colonize. It was my pur
pose to have reraarked on this before, and to urge, as now I
do, that it greatly strengthens the position that the British
governraent has not formed the purpose of attempting agri
cultural settlement in that country. But the Senator from
Missouri, [Mr. Atchison,] to whom I was replying, not having
adverted to this document, it at the moment escaped my atten
tion. Sir, the fact is this : In 1 837 the company applied for a
renewal of its license to trade and hunt. To obtain it, a good
story was to be told, and the Oregon, and all the other almost
unbounded territory on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, to
which the license extended, certainly was described in the color
of the rose. The British government, having such an account
of it thrust into their very faces, determined to introduce into
the renewal a reservation of the right as against the company
to colonize any part of the whole, country to which the license
extended, if during the twenty years for which they gave the
renewal it should wish to do so. And this is all. But does
this afford a scrap of evidence that that governraent had then
forraed, or has now forraed, the design of colonizing the Ore
gon ?
In the first place, there is no proof of any one act evincing
such a design. It was a Whig administration which in 1888
renewed the license. That administration held power till
1841, and did nothing on the subject. The Tory adminis
tration that succeeded it has done nothing. But I may go
further. The senator from Indiana, [Mr. Hannegan,] in his
speech the other day, produced and read the "Morning Chron
icle " of, I believe, 22d August, 1843, to prove some British
opinion about the Oregon. I propose to cross-examine his
witness ; and will put upon the stand for that purpose the same
"Morning Chronicle" of August 28, 1843, six days after the
date of the paper from which he read. It is an 9pposition
paper, and certainly utters itself with a commendable wrath
and freedom. After glancing at certain easy courses, by which
the present ministry might have done themselves honor and
the State service, the writer taunts them in the bitterest

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 153
terras with pursuing a directly opposite policy ; with not doing
this frora fear of Louis Philippe ; with not doing that frora
fear of Russia ; and, araong other things, with " giving up
the Oregon," in consideration of having lost the North-eastern
boundary before ! Certainly, if the Senator's witness is a
credible one, he utterly disproves all rainisterial design of colo
nizing the Oregon.
Take another piece of evidence. Here is an article on " the
fur trade between the North-west coast of America and China,"
in " Fisher's Colonial Magazine," published in London, April,
1843. Very probably it was written by an agent of the Hud
son's Bay Company. I read a paragraph frora page two : " It
is truly mortifying to reflect on the ignorance, imbecility, and
negligence, of the British government, which is allowing us to
be juggled out of this coast, one of the finest in the world,
and unquestionably belonging to us by the right of priority in
discovery." The last part of the paragraph contains news ;
but what does the Senator from Pennsylvania say to the
former ? He can hardly refuse the tribute of his unwilling
admiration to Great Britain, for the energy with which " she
pushes her rights," or rather her claims, without right. " She
is rushing forward," he says, " to get and keep the country ! "
Whereas, here is an unhappy Hudson's Bay Corapany pro
prietor beating his breast and pulling out his hair, because he
cannot raove such " a dish of skiraraed railk " as the British
governraent " to an honorable action." But which to rely on 1
I cannot help thinking that this writer has the best means of
knowledge, both of Oregon and England ; and he calls naraes
with a copiousness and heartiness that shows hira to be alto
gether in earnest.
I add a passage or two frora the "British Foreign Review"
of January, 1 844. In an article " on the Oregon Territory,"
the writer says, " Upon the whole, therefore, the Oregon
Territory holds out no great proraise as an agricultural field."
" We have seen that Oregon offers, upon the whole, very little
induceraent to agricultural pursuits." ""For ourselves, we do
not set any great value upon the country as an emigration field,
either for England or America."
I submit, then. Sir, that the British governraent and nation
at horae has not forraed the design of colonizing the agricul-

154 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tural regions of Oregon. This reservation in the license of
the company strengthens the proofs of this fact. But for that,
the Senator might say, nay, has said, that the government had
no right as against the company to colonize. The right is
gained, and yet the government does nothing.
Sir, Great Britain is not in the Oregon at all, except in and
by the Hudson's Bay Company. She has no fort, nor farm,
nor town, nor trace of footstep there, except in and by the
Hudson's Bay Corapany. I corae now in the next place to
ask, whether that company opposes the slightest obstacle, in
point of fact, to the entrance of our agricultural settlers ? And
nothing is more indisputably certain than that it does not. In
one way only does it seem to be probable that it will do soj
In one way it may. Send an armed mounted force to eject
those persons ; drive them home, mairaed and spoiled, upon
the sympathies and the pride of a government which has
recorded its determination to protect them from violence, and
thus indeed they raay becorae an obstacle to the entrance of
American agricultural immigration. But if, avoiding such
insanity as that, you maintain the existing state of things; if
under this convention you continue to enter with ploughshare
and pruning-hook, and raissionary, twenty years more may see
them pass away, as night, to the more congenial desert. At
present, I say again, that the company does not, in point of
fact, oppose the slightest possible counteracting resistance to
those tendencies and causes which are giving to your farmers
the good lands of Oregon.
We raust distinguish when we speak of the Hudson's Bay
Corapany. As a hunting and trading organization, it is very
forraidable indeed. It wields a large capital ; occupies and
owns a vast region on this side of the raountains, drained by
the waters of the Hudson's Bay ; it has a license of trade
exclusive of all British subjects over that region, and over
other tracts all but boundless on both sides of the mountains ;
employs agents of great skill, acquired by long experience, and
exerts a decisive control upon many of the native races, in the
business of obtaining furs, by hunting, trapping, or trade with
Indians. A solitary ship, or a stranger going there once or
twice in his life, stands no chance with such a body as this.
But thus far. Sir, the compauy opposes no obstacle at all to

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 155
your agricultural settlement. The truth is precisely that it is
ahunting corporation exclusively; it gives no attention to agri
culture ; but it permits its retired servants to take up farms
nbout and near its trading-posts ; and, to some extent, perhaps
a hundred of these retired servants have done so. These per
sons are the only cultivators of Oregon, excepting your own
countrymen. They are English, French, and half-breeds. With
them your settlers mingle peaceably ; your missionaries preach
to them ; and they are at this raoraent coraing within your
influence; ready to receive your laws; to be blended with your
countryraen ; to be enfolded in your protecting arras. Mean
time, the Hudson's Bay Corapany pursues its business of seek
ing furs ; but these are fast disappearing ; and as the garae
goes north, the hunter raust follow. The process which is
going on, then, in the Oregon, is exactly this. The hunter
state is disappearing. The agricultural state is succeeding ;
find your settlers, the farmer, and the missionary, and the
retired servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, its servants no
longer — these, of diverse race, but with kindred objects, and
soon to be a kindred colony, all sprung frora you — these are
the instruraents who are introducing the agricultural state.
And to this process, I repeat, thus far, the Hudson's Bay
Company opposes no hindrance at all.
Sir, the proofs of all parts of this stateraent are conclusive.
In the first place, that the corapany, as such, has no agricul
tural tastes or eraployraents ; and that the discharged servants
are the only farraers, except our own, is certain. It is no part
of its policy or even of its powers to colonize for agriculture.
It is a trading company. Its charter makes it such. Its
whole corporate business has been to trade and hunt. West
of the mountains it has not a foot of land, by grant even from
England. Its title as proprietor is confined exclusively to
lands on this side, drained by the waters of the Hudson's Bay.
On the west side it has a license to trade, and nothing more.
It cannot, even as against England, hold ; it cannot grant one
acre there for independent agricultural occupation.
The Senator from Pennsylvania has referred to the petition
of the corapany for a renewal of their license, and to the
papers attending it, for proof that they meditated agricultural
undertakings. Doubtless, there are some large and vague

156 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
intimations of such a purpose or such a hope. But, on a
closer examination, it becomes quite clear that it is through
their discharged servants only that anything agricultural is to
be done ; that the company remains — as from the first it has
been — a hunter and trader ; and that in neither capacity and
in neither employment has it earned, or does it expect to earn,
any profits, or any considerable profits, on the west side of the
mountains. A paragraph or two will suffice to show this : —
" The principal benefit the company derive from the exclusive license
of trade is the peaceable occupation of their own proper territory, from
which they draw nearly the whole of the profits of their trade, and for the
protection of which they have a right to look to government, in common
with the rest of her Majesty's subjects, as the trade of the country em
braced in the royal license is as yet of very little benefit to them, and
affords greater advantages to the mother-country, in the employment of
shipping, and in the revenue arising from imports and exports, than the
company derive from it.
" That the Hudson's Bay Company have the strongest possible claims
upon ber Majesty's government for a renewal of the exclusive license of
trade, without any rent or pecuniary consideration whatsoever, cannot, 1
should hope, admit of a question, after the explanation I have given ; but
when it is considered that the greater part of the country to which the
license applies is Indian country, opened by treaty to citizens of the Unit
ed States of America as well as to British subjects and, consequently, the
license of exclusive trade does not protect the company from the compe
tition of citizens of the United States, it must appear evident that no sub
stantial benefit is likely to arise from the boon we are soliciting, beyond the
probable means of affording peace to our own territories, in the tranquil
lity of which her Majesty's government ought to feel as deep an interest
as the stockholders of the Hudson's Bay Company."
" The possession of that country to Great Britain may become an ob
ject of very great importance, and we are strengthening that claim to it
(independent of the claims of prior discovery and occupation for the pur
pose of Indian trade), by forming the nucleus of a colony, through the
establishment of farms, and the settlement of some of our retiring officers
and servants as agriculturists''
This petition, whatsoever purposes of agricultural achieve
ment it held out, was presented in 1837. But that in truth
the corapany has not at all raodified its character and objects,
or becorae any less exclusively a hunting and trading corapany
than before, all evidence concurs to prove. Mr, Greenhow, in
his excellent Memoir on the subject, published in May, 1840^
and since then expanded into the most coraplete and raost
authoritative work on the whole Oregon question, in all its

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 157
aspects, which has ever been written, and for which I hope to
unite with the Senator from Pennsylvania, and the whole
senate, in remunerating the laborious and trustworthy com
piler — Mr. Greenhow says, three years after this petition had
been presented, " the only settlement which appears to have
been made under the auspices of the corapany beyond the
Rocky Mountains is that on the Wallamette, where a few old
Canadian voyageurs are perraitted to reside with their Indian
wives and half-breed farailies, on condition of remaining faith
ful to their liege lords of the corapany. In the neighborhood
of each large factory, indeed, a portion of ground is cleared
and cultivated, and dwelling-houses, raills, and shops for arti
sans, are erected ; but these improvements are all entirely
subservient to the uses and objects of the company, all pro
ceedings not strictly connected with its pursuits being dis
couraged." I read now from the " British Foreign Review '¦ of January,
1844: "The interests of the corapany are of course adverse
to colonization." " The fur-trade has been hitherto the only
channel for the advantageous investment of capital in those
regions." Indeed it is plain, that such a company, as such, can do
nothing in agriculture. It cannot live in or near the agricul
tural state. It is not fields of grain, or grass, or cattle, or
pasture, that it requires, but Indians to trade with, beaver and
muskrat to kill, a vast wilderness to range in, one whole re
gion of which it may hunt over this year, leaving it fallow the
next, to replenish its growth of savage life. It cannot blend,
it cannot contemporaneously conduct, agricultural and hunting
occupation. There is a sort of chronological incompatibility
in it. These are successive states, marking successive ages of
man. The company must retire before the agricultural life,
not enjoy it.
In the next place. Sir, it is as clear, and it is an interesting
and pleasing fact, that these discharged servants of the cora
pany possess very friendly dispositions to the government of
the United States, that they receive our settlers hospitably,
that they listen gladly to the instructions of our missionaries,
and that they anticipate with pleasure, not fear, the extension
of our laws and the unfolding of our flag upon the shores of
VOL, II. 14

158 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
their tranquil sea. Araong the docuraents accompanying the
President's message of this session, is a letter from Dr. Elijah
White, our sub-agent beyond the Rocky Mountains. He is a
gentleman, as I learn from information through Mr. Craw
ford of the office of Indian Aff"airs, of excellent character,
whose appointraent to his present office was warraly urged by
Mr. Linn, late of this senate. In this letter he says, —
"I think I mentioned the kind and hospitable manner we were received
and entertained on the way by the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Com
pany, and the cordial and most handsome reception I met with at Fort
Vancouver, from Governor McLaughlin, and his worthy associate chief
factor, James Douglass, Esq., my appointment giving pleasure rather
than pain, — a satisfactory assurance that these worthy gentlemen intend,
eventually, to settle in this country, and prefer American to English
jurisdiction. " On my arrival in the colony, sixty miles south of Vancouver, being in
advance of the party, and coming unexpectedly to the citizens, bearing
the intelligence of the arrival of so large a reinforcement, and giving as
surance of the good intentions of our government, the excitement was
general ; and two days after, we had the largest and happiest public
meeting ever convened in this infant colony.
" I found the colony in peace and health, rapidly increasing in num
bers, having more than doubled in population during the last two years.
English, French, and half-breeds, seem equally with our own people at
tached to the American cause ; hence the bill of Mr. Linn, proffering a
section of land to every white man of the territory, has the double advan
tage of being popular and useful, increasing such attachment, ahd mani
festly acting as a strong incentive to all, of whatever nation or party, to
settle in this country.
" A petition started from this country to-day, making bitter complaints
against the Hudson's Bay Company and Governor McLaughlin. On
reference to it, (as a copy was denied,) I shall only say, had any gentle
man disconnected with the Hudson's Bay Company been at half the
pains and expense to establish a claim to the Wallamette Falls, very few
would have raised an opposition. His half-bushel measure I know to be
exact, according to the English imperial standard. The gentlemen of
this company have been fathers and fosterers of the colony, ever en
couraging peace, industry, and good order, and have sustained a char
acter for hospitality and integrity too well established easily to be
shaken." And this is fully confirraed by those who regard the fact
with an unfriendly eye. The writer in the " Colonial Maga
zine," to whom I have just referred, thus complains : " By a
strange and unpardonable oversight of the local officer of the
corapany, missionaries from the United States were allowed to

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. I59
take religious charge of, the population ; and these artful men
lost no time in introducing such a number of their country
men as reduced the influence of the small number of British
settlers into complete insignificance. Unless a speedy remedy
be applied, our fellow-subjects in that quarter will soon be ex
cluded from the Columbia River, its tributaries and adjacent
countries." It is certain, also, in the next place, that the Hudson's Bay
Company proper, the hunting and trading company, finds
already that its garae is retiring to the north and north-east ;
and the hunter raust follow his game, or cease to bfe a hunter.
You have seen that in the application for a renewal of the
license, it is said that no considerable profits were expected to
be gathered on the west side of the raountains ; that it was
upon their own proper territory on this side, drained by the
waters of the Hudson's Bay, that their business was to be, if
anywhere, advantageously pursued ; and that the license to
hunt and trade on the west side was expected to be useful
mainly as a means df extending and perpetuating that influ
ence over the Indians, and that monopoly of the entire fur-
trade in the North-west, which would insure them the peaceful
aud exclusive range of their own territory, and enable thera,
by a prudent husbandry and alternation of crops, hunting in one
season on one tract, and the next on another, to prevent or
postpone the total destruction of garae. In point of fact, there
is no doubt that, frora causes wholly uncontrollable by thera,
the fur-bearing animals are deserting the Oregon. South of
the Columbia, they are substantially extinct. They are dis
appearing on the north of that river. The company have
bought out the interest of the Russian fur-hunters, above
54° 40'; they are exploring the dim neighborhood of the
Arctic Sea. One age and state of man is fading away in the
Oregon, and another emerges to light. There is not an acre
of good land in the whole valley of the Columbia that is not
even now ready for the agriculture of civilization. Sir, let
me advert to a few proofs of this, A writer on the subject
of furs and the fur-trade, in a paper published in " Silliman's
Journal," concludes : —
"From the foregoing statements, it appears that the fur-trade must
henceforward decline. The advanced state of geographical science shows

160 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
that no new countries remain to be explored. In North America, the
animals are slowly decreasing, from the persevering efforts and the indis
criminate slaughter practised by the hunters, and by the appropriation to
the uses of man of those forests and rivers which have afforded them food
and protection. They recede with the aborigines, before the tide of
civUization." In the article from the " British Foreign Review," to which
I made reference before, it is remarked, " Even now, the ani
mals yielding furs and skins are said to be disappearing, and
the toils of the hunters and trappers are less profitable than
formerly. The Araericans are not probably displeased to ob
serve this, and would rejoice still raore if the corapany should
find it necessary to abandon these regions ; but, even if such a
result should take place, it would be some time before the
United States could be prepared to send forth any large body
of settlers to the country." You perceive that he does not
suggest a doubt that the American wish will be gratified.
Again : " The fur-trade is incompatible with the progress of
settlement, and raust gradually cease as the occupation of the
country proceeds." But I pass to far higher authority upon
the subject. In a speech of the late Mr. McRoberts, of Illi
nois, delivered in this place, at the last session, he says, " The
leading induceraent to the forraation of the convention, which
was to facilitate the collection of furs and skins, has almost
entirely ceased ; and particularly in the country south of the
Columbia, which is the country best adapted to agricultural
pursuits. The hunter has laid by his rifle and traps, and is
cultivating the land for a subsistence. If our people go there,
they must pursue the raechanic arts, or be cultivators of the
soil, — not hunters." To the sarae eff'ect, sustaining in the
fullest raanner ray entire view, were the remarks of his col
league, Mr. Young, in the course of the same debate. They
bear with decisive eff'ect upon all the positions which I have
assumed. " It struck him that it was a mistake to think that Great Britain will
ever look to that territory for agricultural purposes. And herein lay a
great difference between her views and ours. They are in fact different,
and yet no^t conflicting. We want the territory for agricultural pursuits,
mainly. She looks to it for the main pursuit of the Hudson's Bay Com
pany, which is the trade in furs." " In the Oregon Territory, this com
pany, not having for its primary object agricultural pursuits, never have

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 161
encouraged more culture of the soil than necessary for the temporary
support of its eraployees. But with our citizens, agriculture must be the
primary object. We have already a number of otir citizens there, en
gaged in this pursuit. There is no jealousy towards them on the part of
the Hudson's Bay Company, so long as they make agriculture their
primary pursuit."

And

again : —

" The most friendly feelings are evinced by the employees of the Hud
son's Bay Company towards our citizens now there. They give no offence
by occupying any portion of the soil they please in agriculture. The Hud
son's Bay Company can have no objection, and will make none, to agri
cultural settlements." " There is nothing like an effort or disposition on
the part of the Hudson's Bay Company to make permanent agricultural
settlements. Theirs is a mere temporary occupation."
Mr. Linn followed Mr. Young, and said, —
" He felt it unnecessary to consume time in debate, after the very lucid
statement of the Senator from Illinois, placing the matter on the plain
grounds on which it should be viewed."
I say, then. Sir, that the Hudson's Bay Company, in point
of fact, is opposing no obstacle at all to your agricultural enter
prise to the Oregon. Neither the hunter, not the discharged
servant, who is giving his few last and fatigued years to the
cultivation of the land, opposes any obstacle. There is no ob
stacle of force, or fraud, or of inhospitality. I dare say, little
controversies there may be, such as there are everywhere ; con
troversies about titles, first possession, prices, monopolies of
grinding grain, sawing timber, and the like ; such as the me
morial presented by the Senator frora Missouri [Mr. Atchison]
sets forth ; but the weight of evidence frora all sources, is raost
decisive to show, that with the Hudson's Bay CompsLuy proper
our settlers come into no contact; and that from the dis-
charged employees, the British, French, and half-breed farmers,
they have experienced generally the most hospitable and the
kindest reception. Already we are, in numbers, more than
two to their one. The whole number of persons, all told, in
the employment of the company in the Oregon, or discharged,
and cultivating the soil, does not exceed a thousand. We
have, I think, seven missionary stations, frora two hundred
miles south of the Columbia to Paget's Sound, one hundred
and forty miles north of it ; we have two thousand persons
14*

162 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
there; we have, beyond doubt, the best grazing and best
wheat country in the whole territory, the valley of the Walla
mette, which some visitors liken, for fertility and almost for
extent, to New York.
The Senator frora Pennsylvania, however, twice or thrice
takes care to tell you that " the Hudson's Bay Corapany had
murdered four or five hundred of our citizens, as we had
learned from good authority, either directly with their own
hands, or indirectly through the agency of the Indians, who
were under their exclusive control. They had murdered and
expelled all our citizens who had gone there for the purpose of
interfering with their hunting and trafficking and trading."
The Senator does not assert that they have murdered or
expelled anybody who went there to settle. My proposition,
therefore, he has not assailed. But, from the terras of his
actual statement, I apprehend the senate would derive an im
pression, undesigned by him, undesigned, certainly, if it be an
erroneous irapression, which is utterly unsupported by the
facts. Sir, the stateraent of the Senator has no sort of applica
tion to, and composes no part of, and throws no light on, the
existing policy or purposes of that company, or on the actual
circurastances under which our citizens go to that country to
day. Why, Sir, when were these four or " five hundred "
murdered ? In whose administration ? Where ? How ? Un
der what circumstances ? Will it not surprise you to learn
that all this was more than fifteen years — rauch, much of it
more than thirty years ago ? Will it not surprise you still
more to learn that the circumstances in which it happened are
such as to leave it a matter of utter uncertainty whether the
company, directly or indirectly, with intention, caused the death
of one of the four or five hundred ? While upon the whole
proof, it will appear, that within the last fifteen years, probably
a much longer period, they certainly have not caused or pro
cured the murder of one raan !
Before the year 1821, there were two great corapanies, the
Hudson's Bay Corapany and the North-west Company, which
contended for the furs of the north-west portions of North
America. They carried the competition to the extent of an
actual civil war. Aff'airs almost araounting to battles were
fought. Blood was shed. The most painful scenes of vio-

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 163
lence, cruelty, insubordination, and selfish disregard of the
rights, interests, and lives of men, were exhibited ; and this
disgraceful and distressing state of things was continued for
years, and over almost all the unbounded wilderness which
spreads itself out araong and on each side of the Rocky Moun
tains, is traversed by the waters of the Hudson's Bay, and
subsides towards the Arctic Sea. The consequence was, of
course, that all control of the Indians was lost. Spirituous
liquors were freely introduced araong thera. Their treacher
ous and ferocious natures were stiraulated by all sorts of appli
ances ; and there is no doubt that many American citizens,
hunters, and trappers, among and on each side of the moun
tains, and about the heads of the upper Mississippi and upper
Missouri, lost their lives by the hands of these wild men. It
has been estiraated, and I do not know that it has not been
truly estimated, that between 1808, or a few years earlier, and
1821, or a few years later, but before 1829, five hundred
Araerican citizens were thus raurdered. They were murdered
by Indians, wearing European blankets ; arraed with European
rifles ; drunk upon European spirits. So rauch we know.
Perhaps it is all we know.
In 1821, the two corapanies were united in the Hudson's
Bay Corapany. The scene was changed iraraediately. The
white raen no longer quarrelled araong theraselves. The In
dians were subjected to a more perfect and better adrainistered
surveillance. Spirituous liquors were excluded. The reign of
law and order was restored, and has in the raain been pre
served ever since. And from that time, I compute from 1821,
or a few years later, 1826 or 1828, I deny that there is a
particle of evidence that the Hudson's Bay Corapany, or any
body else, civihzed or savage, by their procureraent, has raur
dered any Araerican citizen anywhere.
Indian murders since that time there raay have been ; but
what I say is, that I have not seen a scrap of proof that
they were instigated, directly or indirectly, by this company.
Whether the raurders of that earher period were instigated by
any white trader, I have not inquired, and do not know. Let
me refer you to the account the corapany give of this matter
themselves, in the petition to which the "Senator from Penn
sylvania has referred : —

164 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
" It is unnecessary to say more of the eager competition into which this
association entered with the Hudson's Bay Company for the trade of the
Indian districts, or of the scenes of demoralization and destruction of life
and property to which it led, than to /efer your lordship to the ample de
tails on this revolting subject in the Colonial Department ; to the agree
ments at last entered into between the rival companies to put an end to
them by the union of their interests in 1821."
" Great loss of property, and in some cases loss of life, have been in
curred by savage and murderous attacks on their hunting-parties and
establishments, and order has only been restored, and peace maintained by
the employment, at a great expense, of considerable force, and by the ex
ercise, on the part of their servants, of the utmost temper, patience, and
perseverance." " Under that arrangement, his lordship, at a very heavy expense, con
veyed several hundred families from Europe to that settlement ; but the
evils attendant on the competition in the fur-trade extending to this set
tlement, occasioned serious breaches of the peace, much loss of life, and
the breaking up or abandonment of the settlement by the whites on two
different occasions."
" By that report it will moreover be seen that the animosities and feuds
which kept the Indian country in a state of continued disturbance, ex
tending to the loss of lives and to the destruction of property, have, since
1821, entirely ceased ; that the sale or distribution of spirituous liquors
to the Indians has, in most parts of the country, been entirely discon
tinued, and in all other parts so much reduced as to be no longer an evil ;
and that the moral and religious improvement of the native population has
been greatly promoted."
You see then. Sir, that these murders were coraraitted from
fifteen to thirty years ago. By whomsoever done, by whom
soever procured, they throw no light on the existing disposi
tions of the corapany towards agricultural iramigrants from
the United States ; and they do not irapugn or qualify in the
slightest degree the universality and the truth of my position,
that no obstacle is now actually opposed by anybody to our
agricultural occupation of the Oregon. I have given you the
proofs of that position, and you will judge of them.
Well, what does the Senator frora Pennsylvania reply to all
this 1 Why, Sir, only, and exactly, that it is too good to last.
That is all. He does not pretend that Great Britain is now
colonizing the country agriculturally. He exhibits no proof
that she now meditates such a thing. He exhibits no proof
that she now cherishes the purpose of building forts or marts
in the Oregon. He exhibits no proof that the Hudson's Bay
Company is lifting a finger to keep your farmers, artisans, or
missionaries, from it. But this is too good to last ! Great

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 165
Britain will certainly break out into some new development of
policy. The Hudson's Bay Company will kill somebody. It
is irapossible that this state of things should last.
Well, Sir, perhaps it is. What then ] I will tell you
what then. Keep your eye always open, like the eye of your
own eagle, upon the Oregon. Watch day and night. If any
new developments of policy break forth, meet them. If the
time changes, do you change. New things in a new world.
Eternal vigilance is the condition of erapire as well as of
liberty. In the mean time, you see the existing state of things. You
see the present. You are sure that you see it. Govern your
selves accordingly. Go on with your negotiation. Go on
with your eraigration. Are not the rifles and the wheat grow
ing together side by side 1 Will it not be easy, when the in
evitable hour coraes, to beat back ploughshare and pruning
hooks into their original forms of instruments of death 1
Alas ! that that trade is so ea;Sy to learn, and so hard to for
get ! Who now living will see the tirae when nations shall
learn war no more ; when the wicked shall cease frora trou
bling, and the weary be at rest, on this side the grave 1
I do not follow senators, therefore, a step in their specula
tions on the direction which any new policy of England or the
Hudson's Bay Corapany may take in the Oregon. Where no
man knows whether there is to be a new policy at all, it is
vain and idle to begin to guess what shape it may take, and
what details it raay involve. Wait and see. Wait and see.
The Senator wonders at the " inconsistency " with which
the Senator from Massachusetts told the senate that Great
Britain would go to war for Oregon, and in the next breath
that the Hudson's Bay Company would abandon it without a
" struggle." What inconsistency 1 I said that the Hudson's
Bay Corapany were hunters, not farmers ; that their game
was retiring northward, and inland, and that the hunter had
already followed and would follow his garae ; and that even
now he had left your agricultural settlers to lay the foundation
of their colony in peace ; and seen without a struggle his in
fluence upori his own retired eraployees, and on your country
men, annihilated by Araerican raissionaries and American pre
dilections. I said that England did not in point of fact inter-

166 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
fere with this ; but that, if, anticipating and disturbing the
natural course of things, you urge on a forcible attack upon
the yet lingering company ; burn their stockade forts ; rob
them of their peltries, and shed their blood, England had ex
pressly declared, in the negotiation of 1827, that she would
interpose, and that it was probable that she would. Where is
the inconsistency of one of my views with the other 1
The Senator says, also, " to imagine England was going to
give up the right of colonizing in Oregon without a struggle
was to imagine what seeraed very strange, not to say impos
sible." Well, Sir, if it is irapossible, there is an end of it.
We will wait and see. But does not the Senator hiraself ex
pressly tell us that " England is too wise to risk a war for the
possession of that country? " " That it is a moral impossibility
at this day, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era ? "
" That she would not go to war with us, unless upon a ques
tion where her honor was concerned ? " which I understand
him to suppose is not concerned. If it is impossible she should
risk a war for the country, and yet also impossible to imagine
she will yield it without a struggle, why, she must look to
herself. But if the Senator is right in the last opinion which
he expressed, which was that she would not fight unless the
point of honor became involved, why may she not go on, as
now she does, allowing events to take their own course 1 Why
is it not a graceful and obvious way of disengaging herself
from connection with a subject for which she is said to be too
wise to fight ? On one of the Senator's views of the matter,
this would seem exactly the sensible and easy policy. But
again I say, wait and see !
I observe that the British and Foreign Reviewer advances
the suggestion, that we, or our settlers, are welcome to all the
agricultural Oregon ; but the British government will seek to
retain a comraon use of the rivers and the harbor of Fuca. ,
Well, now, in this I think I see the whole question collapsing
into a pretty sraall and very raanageable thing. In the first
place, the nation that owns the land will be likely, if it chooses,
to hold rivers and harbor. In the next place, as the game
retires, the use of these becoraes of less and less importance to
Great Britain. In the third place, I do not know that perrais
sion of a temporary and restricted enjoyment of these waters, in

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. I67
general subordination to our right, involves any very terrific
consequences. Witness the case of the St. John. And finally,
by great bad luck, there is but one harbor ; and the rivers are
good for nothing ! " The rivers of Western Araerica," says
Mr, Greenhow, " present in fact few or no facilities for cora
raercial transportation. They nearly all run in their whole
course through deep ravines araong stony raountains ; and
they are frequently interrupted by ledges or accumulations of
rock, producing falls and rapids, to overcome which all the
resources of art would probably be unavailing."
Senators tell us that England maintains Gibraltar and
Malta on points about which she owns no agricultural settle
ments ; and therefore infer she will never be easy till she hears
that encircling and importunate drum beat on the desert coast
of the North-west. Well, Sir, I cannot say. If she begins to
build a Gibraltar there, do you begin too. Let your walls
ascend with hers. Go up with her story by story ; a tier of guns
for every new one she plants ; and the day when she throws out
the red cross flag from the turret of her consummated struc
ture, cast abroad the radiant stainless stars and stripes, to tell
her that there " foreign dominion shall not come." In the
mean time, let me say that this Gibraltar and Malta analogy
does not seem to me very direct. Gibraltar and Malta are
men-of-war harbors, where whole armadas may lie afloat,
directly on both the old and both the modern routes of com
merce from Europe to the East ; points from which a British
fleet may unmoor, and in ten days strike with thunder the"
walls of one or more cities of how many of the nations of
Europe, Asia, and Africa: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy^,
Austria, Greece, Russia by the Black Sea, Turkey, Syria,
Egypt, Algiers. To argue frora her tenacious possession of
such places a necessary desire to see new Gibraltars and new
Maltas rise under the 49th degree of north latitude upon the
North-west coast, does not strike rae as extreraely cogent.
One event there is. Sir, which may change your policy and
hers, which I marvel not to have heard adverted to. If in
five or ten years the isthraus of Panama is cut through, and
thus a new track of coraraerce paved out in the sea ; if that
great triumph of man over the world of matter is achieved ; if
that marriage of oceans is really celebrated, then new and in-

168 ' SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tense iraportance may be given to new lands, and new seas ;
to the Sandwich Islands, to California, to San Francisco, pos
sibly to the harbor of Fuca itself. He who lives to see that
new earth, and those new heavens, will have new and appro
priate duties to perforra, and new and sufficient lights by
which to perform them. In the mean time, we are here.
We have the present to work in and provide for. Our situa
tion is the teacher and the limit of our duty. Long, long
before that day, I hope this question will have been adjusted,
and have taken its place among the follies, among the triviali
ties, of which, a hundred years hence, men shall read with
incredulity and astonishraent, that, for such things. Christian
nations were once near shedding each other's blood.
In the expression of this hope, Mr. President, I believe I
speak for my country. It is true that the Senator from Penn
sylvania has said, —
" He admitted with regret that there were some very dangerous symp
toms between the two countries. The whole press of Great Britain, for
the last tvvo years, had teemed with abuse of America, and all that was
American ; our institutions, and everything connected with us, had been
made the subject of perpetual vituperation.
" All he had read was substantially of the same tenor, — the abuse was
unexampled in any former time. And, on the other hand, among our
selves, though there were many, in our large cities especially, who enter
tained a warmth of feeling towards England — insomuch that on a great
public occasion, in one of the largest of those cities, the health of " the
President of the United States " had been drunk in silence, while that of
" Queen Victoria " had been received with acclamation — yet with the
great mass of our people, a very different feeling prevailed. They still
reraember the wrongs we had endured in days past; they remembered
these things perhaps with too deep a sensibility. And although senators
might please their ears with the terms " mother " and " daughter," a vast
majority of our people were penetrated with the conviction that to us
England had ever acted the part of a cruel step-mother. It was this
deep-wrought conviction, these associations of former scenes, that lay at
the foundation of the national enmity, which too extensively prevailed.
Injuries on one side, and their remembrance on the other, kept up this ill
blood. Besides, even were it otherwise, the Americau people, as one man,
felt that there was a calamity even greater than that of war, and that was
a sacrifice of the national honor."
But is this so ? Is it so, that the great mass of the people
of this country are pervaded, are " penetrated " by a deep-
seated, " deep-wrought " " sentiment of national enraity " tow
ards this particular nation England 1 Is it so, that our veins

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. 169
are filled with " ill blood " towards that country, — ill blood
.generated and fed by the "raeraory of wrongs endured in
days past " ? This I understand the Senator to allege, and
even to regret. I have repeated to you, however, exactly
what he says, to be interpreted by yourselves. But thus T
understand it. The cherished reraerabrance of wrongs en
dured in past days, the conviction that England had ever acted
the part of a "cruel step-raother;" the "associations of forraer
scenes," these bitter raeraories, corapose the deep foundations
of a too extensive national hostility; these things raake the
great body of the people eneraies of England, in a time of
profound peace. Thus I interpret the Senator. Is this so ]
Being, Sir, thrpugh the favor of a kind Providence, one of
the people of America myself; and having been born and
bred, not in cities, which are said to love England, but in the
country, which is said, as I understand the honorable Senator,
to hate her ; and having been astonished and pained to hear
it asserted that such a people, one of as happy, generous, and
(kind a nature as the sun shines on, were laboring under a sen-
tinient so gloomy and so barbarous as this, I have been revolv
ing the subject with sorae care and with sorae feeling. Ex
hausted "as I am, and as you are, I cannot sit down without
denouncing, in the first place, the sentiment thus, as I under
stand the Senator, ascribed by him to ray countrymen, as
immoral, unchristian, unchivalrous, unworthy, of good raen,
unworthy of " gallant men, and men of honor ; " and without,
in the second place, expressing my entire and profound convic
tion that no such sentiraent inhabits the bosora of the Araeri
can people. Sir, I thank the Senators from Kentucky and
Virginia [Mr. Crittenden and Mr. Rives] for their notice of
this part of the honorable Senator's address. With my last
words, if I knew I were about to speak them, would I unite
my judgments and feelings on this subject with them.
Mr. President, we must distinguish a little. That there
exists in this country an intense^ sentiment of nationality ; a
cherished, energetic feeling and consciousness of our indepen
dent and separate national existence ; a feeling that we have a
transcendent destiny to fulfil, which we mean to fulfil ; a great
work to do, which we know how to do, and are able to do ; a
career to run, up which we hope to ascend till we stand on the
VOL. II. 15

170

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

steadfast and glittering summits of the w6rld; a feeling that
we are surrounded and attended by a noble, historical group
of competitors and rivals, the other nations of the earth, all
of whom we hope to overtake and even to distance — such a
sentiment as this exists perhaps in the character of this people.
And this I do not discourage ; I do not condemn. It is easy
to ridicule it. But " grand sweUing sentiraents " of patriotism
no wise raan will despise. They have their uses. They help
to give a great heart to a nation; to aniraate it for the various
conflict of its lot ; to assist it to work out for itself a more
exceeding weight and to fill a larger measure of glory. But,
Sir, that araong these useful and beautiful sentiraents, predom
inant among them, there exists a temper of hostility towards
this one particular nation, to such a degree as to amount to a
habit, a trait, a national passion, to amount to a state of feeling
which " is to be regretted," and which really threatens another
vjrar — this I earnestly and confidently deny. I would not
hear your eneray say this.
Sir, the indulgence of such a sentiment by the people sup
poses them to have forgotten one of the counsels of Washing
ton. Call to raind the ever seasonable wisdom of the Fare
well Address : —
" The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an
habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animos
ity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its
duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes
each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes
of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling
occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, enven
omed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill-will and resent
ment sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best cal
culations of policy. The governraent sometimes participates in the
national propensity, and adopts, through passion, what reason would
reject ; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient
to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister
and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty
of nations, has been the victim.'^
No, Sir. No, Sir. We are above all this. Let the High
land clansman, half naked, half civilized, half blinded by the
peat smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his
hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep, and precious

ON OCCUPYING OREGON. l^^l
hatred, set on fire of hell, alive if he can ; let the North Amer
ican Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by
Heaven knows what syrabols of alligators and rattlesnakes
and war-clubs sraeared with verrailion and entwined with
scarlet ; let such a country as Poland, cloven to the earth, the
armed heel on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul
incapable to die, — let her "remember the wrongs of days long
past ; " let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel reraeraber
theirs, — the raanliness and the syrapathy of the world raay
allow or pardon this to thera ; but shall America, young, free,
prosperous, just setting out on the highway of heaven, " deco-
(Eating and cheering the elevated sphere she just begins to move
in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and joy," — shall
"she be supposed to be polluting and corroding her noble and
happy heart, by moping over old stories of Starap Act, and tea
tax, and the firing of The Leopard upon The Chesapeake in a
time of peace ? No, Sir ; no. Sir ; a thousand times no !
Why, I protest I thought all that had been settled. I thought
two wars had settled it all. What else was so much good
blood shed for on so many more than classical fields of Revolu
tionary glory 1 For what was so much good blood more
lately shed at Lundy's Lane, at Fort Erie, before and behind
the hues at New Orleans, on the deck of The Constitution, on
the deck of The Java, on the lakes, on the sea, but to settle
exactly these " wrongs of past days " 'i And have we corae
back sulky and sullen, frora the very field of honor ? For ray
country I deny it. The Senator says that our people still
remember these " former scenes of wrong with perhaps too
deep " a sensibility ; and that, as I interpret him, they nourish
a " too extensive " national enmity. How so ? If the feeling
he attributes to them is raoral, raanly, creditable, how coraes it
to be too deep ; and if it is imraoral, unraanly, and unworthy,
why is it charged on thera at all- ? Is there a raeraber of this
body, who would stand up in any educated, in any intelligent
and right-rainded circle which he respected, and avow, that for
his part he must acknowledge, that, looking back through the
glories and the atonements of two wars, his veins were full of
ill blood to England ; that in peace he could not help being
her enemy; that he could not pluck out the deep-wrought con
victions and "the imraortal hate" of the old times ? Certainly,

172 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
not one. And then, Sir, that which we feel would do no honor
to ourselves, shall we confess for our country ?
Mr. President, let rae say, that in my judgment this notion
of a national enraity of feeling towards Great Britain belongs
to a past age of our history. My younger countryraen are
unconscious of it. They disavow it. That generation in
whose opinions and feelings the actions and the destiny of the
next age are enfolded, as the tree in the germ, do not at all
coraprehend your raeaning, nor your fears, nor your regrets.
We are born to happier feelings. We look on England as we
look on France, We look on them, from our new world, not
unrenowned, yet a new world still ; and the blood mounts to
our cheeks ; our eyes swim ; our voices are stifled with emu-
lousness of so rauch glory; their trophies will not let us sleep;
but there is no hatred at all ; no hatred ; all for honor, noth
ing for hate ! We have, we can have no barbarian memory
of wrongs, for which brave raen have raade the last expiation
to the brave.
No, Sir ; if public raen, or any one public man, think it
their duty to make a war or cultivate the dispositions of war
towards any nation, let thera perform the duty, and have done
with it. But do riot say that there is an unfortunate, morbid,
impracticable popular temper on the subject, which you desire
to resist, but are afraid you shall not be able to resist. If you
will answer for the politicians, I think I will venture to answer
for the people.

SPEECH UPON THE SUBJECT OF PROTECTING AMERI
CAN LABOR BY DUTIES ON IMPORTS.
DELIVEKJBI) m THE SBNATE 01" THE UNITED STATES, APEIL 12 AND 16, 1844.

[The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. McDuffie] had introduced, on
leave, the following bill : —
A BILL to revive the act ofthe second of March, one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-three, usually called the " Compromise Act," and to modify the
existing duties upon foreign imports in conformity to its provisions.
Be it enacted hy the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, That so much of the existing law imposing
duties upon foreign imports aa provides that duties ad valorem on certain com
modities shall be assessed upon an assumed minimum value, be, and the same is
hereby, repealed, and that said duties be hereafter assessed on the true value of
such commodities.
Sec. 2. And be ii further enacted. That in all cases in which the existing
duty upon any imported commodity exceeds thirty per centum on the value
thereof, such duty shall be hereafter reduced to thirty per centum ad va
lorem. Sec. 3. A'nd be it further enacted. That from and after the thirty-first day
of December* next, all duties upon foreign imports shall be reduced to twenty-
five per centum; and from and after the thirty -first of December, one thou
sand eight hundred and forty-four, to twenty per centum ad valorem.
And the committee on finance of the senate had reported resolutions
recommending its indefinite postponement. The debate arose upon those
resolutions.]Me. President, —
It is not my purpose, and never has been, to engage in
a general discussion of this subject. In the actual circura
stances, no consideration could induce me to do so. Good
taste, if nothing else, ought to prevent it. In my hands,
such a discussion could retain neither interest nor usefulness.
There is literally nothing at all left to be said or to be re
futed. Truths, threadbare and worn to tatters, or novel-
15*

174 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
ties, erapty, false, sounding, and raischievous, are at least all
that is left. It has come to be preeminently that case in which
" true things are not new things, and new things are not true
things." Besides, Sir, for the raaintenance of the doctrines to which
I am devoted, and with the steady and constant practice of
which the corafort, the prosperity, and the greatness of the
American people, are inseparably intertwined, more general
discussion is needless. The defence of the system of protec
tion is made. It has been raade before and elsewhere, by ten
thousand tongues and pens, and by that which is more eloquent
and more persuasive than any tongue or pen, — the teachings
of experience, — the lapse of tirae, — the revelations of events,
— the past and present of our own country, and of all coun
tries. It has been raade, here and now, by the Senators from
Maine, Connecticut, Verraont, Rhode Island, and Georgia,
and by my friend and colleague, [Messrs. Evans, Huntington,
Phelps, Siraraons, Berrien, and Bates,] with a fulness and
ability that leaves nothing to be desired and nothing to be
added. If this Troy of ours can be defended ; if these daily
iand indispensable employments of our people can be preserved
to thera ; if these fields and shops of useful, honest, and re
spectable labor • — labor which at once elevates and blesses the
individual operative, by hundreds of thousands, and, iri its
larger results, contributes to fill the raeasure of the nation's
glory — if these can be defended, their hands will have been
sufficient to raake the defence. If theirs are not, my feeble '
efforts can avail nothing.
There is another reason, Mr. President, on which I decline
that larger and more eleraentary discussion that has occupied
so much of this debate, on which, without the least disrespect
to any one, I desire to say a word : and that is, that, for my
self, I cannot consent to regard this matter of protection as at
all that open question which it might seem to have been re
garded by senators on aU sides. Sir, I presume to prescribe
no rule of debate to others ; nor to criticise, or even to observe
upon their course; but I shaU not allow myself to treat this
question as open to the extent, and for the objects that have
been assumed and contended for. No doubt, there is a sense
and an extent in which it may, under proper limitations, be

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 175
said to be always open. Details may be said to be so. Hav
ing due regard to the great considerations of stability and con
stancy ; of giving all things, when once adopted, a fair and
full trial ; and of changing nothing frora lightness and caprice
and the pursuit of abstractions, — details raay be adraitted to
be always open. When the lights of a full and fair experience
prescribe the change of a duty, it is to be changed. It is open
to inquiry, whether a given or a proposed duty is needed for
protection, or is enough for it. It is an open question whether
the rates of 1789 are sufficient to-day, and whether those of
1828 are required to-day. In such a sense as this, this sub
ject, like all law, like all policy, like the steadfast nature of the
Constitution itself, is open to the gentle and reforraing hand of
the great innovator, time.
But whether there ought to be in our industrial code such a
thing as a policy of adequate protection of the universal labor
of the country ; such a thing as a system designed and suf
ficient to develop and sustain our whole capacity and all our
forms of domestic eraployraent, — on the land, on the sea, in
the arts, everywhere, and in everything, — by the iraposition,
among other means, of duties on imports ; a system designed
and sufficient to guard the American workman, on whatever
field, against the irregular irruptions of the redundant capital,
low rates of interest money, low wages, under-fed labor and
contingent surpluses of foreign States ; this is a question which
I do not mean, by my example, to acknowledge an open one.
To the dispute whether protection shall always be treated as
incidental to revenue, or may be made a principal object itself;
to the dispute as to when it is an incident and when a principal
object ; whether there is such a thing, and what it is, as a
revenue maximum ; to disputes about forms of duties, specific,
ad valorem, minimums, and the like, I attach no great impor
tance. I mean by protecting duties, duties which protect : and
whether these duties should or should not be blended with, and
form part of our impost system, I repeat, I do not mean to
discuss as an open question.
And why not open % Because, Sir, I find such a system of
protection in operation, de jure and de facto, to-day; because I
know perfectly well, — or all our annals are a dream and a lie, —
that the American people established the Constitution and the

176 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Union, very much to insure the maintenance of such a sys
tera ; because it has been slowly raaturing for years ; because
so large a concurrence of patriotisra, intelligence, and experi
ence, has helped to build it up ; because, whether it was wise
or unwise to introduce such a system, by direct legislation, at
first, it would be supreme madness now, now when the first
stages are passed, when the evil, if any there ever was, is all
done, and the compensations of good are just fairly commen
cing ; when capital has taken this direction ; when prices are
brought down, skill learned, habits formed, machinery accu
mulated, the whole scheme of things accommodated to it ;
when its propitious influence is felt palpably upon agriculture,
upon the comfort and the standing of labor, upon domestic and
foreign trade, upon defence, upon independence — it would be
supreme madness, worthy only of a government nodding to its
fall, now to overturn it ; because, finally, it is the daily labor,
and the daily bread of men, women, and children, our coun
tryraen and countryworaen, whom we reckon by millions.
It is for these reasons, Sir, that I cannot regard it as a
debatable question, whether it is lawful, under the Constitu
tion, or expedient in point of political economy, that this
system should exist.
While, therefore, I appreciate, as highly as any one can do,
the ability and energy with which the Senator from South
Carolina [Mr, McDuffie] has urged his opinions in this de
bate, I must, in conforraity with these views, consider it as a
sufficient notice for me to take of the bill which he has intro
duced, and still more, of such a bill as should embody the
principles of policy and the Constitution which he has so
powerfully advocated, — to pronounce it a stupendous novelty,
and there to leave it. It is all a novelty, from the beginning
to the end. In its principle ; in its object ; in its details ; in
the argument which accompanies it, it is not only unlike, but
it is adverse to, it is at war with, every law that has been
passed unier the Constitution ; and not so only, but it forgets,
it disregards, it disappoints the desires and purposes and
wants of that generation of our fathers which called the Con
stitution into existence, and enriched it with all its vast powers
of good. Why, Sir, what is the bill of the honorable Senator;
or, rather, what would it be, if it still more exactly expressed

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 177
his constitutional and econoraical doctrines ? It is a bill which
aspires to construct an irapost systera, frora which all purpose
of intentional protection shall be carefully weeded out with
thurab and finger. It goes for revenue, and nothing else. It
does not merely seek to bring into the treasury a certain
aggregate of revenue, having regard to the wants of an eco
noraical administration of the government — that would be
right — but in all its details it looks to revenue alone. Every
single duty is to be laid upon the notion of getting, from that
one itera, the largest possible araount at the lowest possible
rate of irapost. The bill does not try to protect. It does not
inquire whether it protects. It does not care whether it pro
tects. Live or die under it who will, if the aggregate araount
of money is obtained, and if each particular duty yields its
prescribed quota of supply, its end is answered. Yes, Sir !
The capital and labor and experience, which are producing
three or four or five hundreds of raillions of annual values,
may go up or go down ; the skill which years have been edu
cating may be disraissed and squandered ; fountains of national
wealth and civilization may be dried up ; raachinery and pro
cesses and methods, the splendid triumjihs of raind over
matter, raay he cast aside, as an old bow, which none of this
generation knows how to bend, or has strength to bend ; a
million hands may raiss their accustoraed labor, a raillion
mouths their accustoraed food, — yet the bill has done all that
it desires, and is perfectly satisfied with itself ! I do not
speak of, nor allude to, the wishes and dispositions of the
honorable raover hiraself, of course ; they, I doubt not, are
just and philanthropic ; but I speak of th^ bill. It goes for
revenue ; and if it obtains it, it disregards all possible' inter
mediate consequences.
Such a bill. Sir, within the views which I take of this
whole subject, I cannot consent to discuss. I pass it by, with
entire respect to its friends, as an enorraous and pernicious
novelty. It is enough for me that no such impost systera as
this was drearaed of by the people who willed the Constitution
into being ; or by the rainds who fraraed it and adopted it, or
by any president, or congress, or party, who ever adrainis
tered it ; and that no precedent and no warrant for such a
thing is to be found in all the series of our legislation, Grati-

178 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
fied certainly, I have been, with the able and instructive argu
ments of ray friends in this discussion, showing, with resistless
force, that all this is not only novel, but impolitic ; that our
system is not only settled, but rightly settled. To those
reasonings I could add nothing if I would ; and I would not
if I could. If at this time of day, the labor of the country
cannot repose upon the policy of protection as an established
policy, then indeed is " the pillared firmament rottenness, and
earth's base built on stubble."
While, then, I retire from that general discussion of a
boundless and exhausted subject to which we have been in
vited, I admit that a question more practical, and raore prop
erly to be regarded as open, is involved in this deliberation;
and that is, not whether adequate protection shall or shall not
be given to Araerican labor ; not whether mechanical and
manufacturing arts and industry are worth preserving for
their influence upon all industry, and upon individual pros
perity and enjoyment, and national wealth and power ; but
whether a given or a proposed rate of duty affords that ade
quate protection, and insures the growth of those useful and
those imperial arts] Iiij)ther words, it is this question, — can
you make a proposed^reat charigeTri the existing rates, and
still leave enough for the protection which the governraent and
the country have deterrained to give ?
Sir, this is the question which has been moved by the
honorable Senator frora Missouri, [Mr. Benton,] not now in
his place. That distinguished gentleman comes into this de
liberation, not as an enemy, but as a friend of a sufficient pro
tective systera. He rerainded you that he voted for the act of
1824, and voted " cordially " for it ; yet that act, beyond all
doubt, permanently laid the foundation of what he calls the
"new system; " that he voted for the act of 1828 "reluc
tantly," but that he voted for it ; that he voted for that of 1 832
" because it reduced duties on many necessaries," although it
still left, as I suppose, for most objects, a pretty energetic pro
tecting tariff", against which both the then senators from South
Carolina, and six out of nine of her representatives voted ; and,
finally, that he voted against the Compromise Act, " because
he thought the horizontal line wrong in principle, and, for other
reasons." Retaining his original friendship, as I understood

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 179
him, for a sufficient protective system, since he expressly de
clares himself " willing to give manufactures far more pro
tection than they need," he however counsels a vast change of
the existing system, — a change which I ara profoundly ira
pressed with the conviction that you cannot raake without the
ultimate, perhaps quick, but at last inevitable destruction of all
the interests which it was created to cherish, and all that multi
plied variety of individual and general good M'hich illustrates
and recommends it. He counsels an abandonraent of the
existing system, " the new system," the system which began,
as he says, in 1816, and has been embodied successively in
the acts of 1816, of 1824, of 1828, and of 1842; the last
(against which he voted) being in his judgment " the very
worst of all." He counsels an abandonment of this systera,
and a return to the " good old laws," the good old systera,
the systera of our fathers, — the system " which began in
1789, with the beginning of the governraent," and continued
down to the year 1808. He does not advise you to revive
any one law, or any one precise rate of duty, that obtained in
the happy and peaceful period to which he turns you back. It
is the system which he would revive. In his terse, forcible,
and clear expression, he sketches rapidly its general features,
as he would reproduce thera. He indicates certain conditions
which raust be satisfied, and such protection as can be afforded
'. consistently with the satisfaction of those conditions he raeans
to leave. As well as I reraeraber, — and I speak with the raost
anxious desire, in his absence this raorning from his seat, not
to misrepresent him, — araong these conditions are these : all
minimums are to be abolished; ad valorem duties are, as I
infer, although I cannot pronounce positively of his views in
this particular, to be computed upon the foreign values ;
luxuries are to be taxed high ; necessaries, although coming
in competition with what are woven in your own looms, ham
mered out on your own anvils, cut and stitched on your own
shoemakers' or merchant-tailors' seats, are to be taxed low ;
and no duty, under whatever denomination, is to ascend above
thirty-three and one third per cent. " The average on the
whole, he fully believes, will not be equal to the twenty per
cent, ad valorem of the Corapromise Act," Subject to these
conditions, satisfying these conditions to this extent, the dis-

180 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tinguished Senator would give you protection. This system
he advises you to substitute for the existing one. If it should
happen to turn out inadequate, the manufacturer and mechanic
have this consolation, — that they have mistaken their calling,
and that the system, by which they die, is the good old one of
their fathers,
Mr. President, upon this counsel of the honorable Senator
let me say a few words. Certainly, in the very form of speech
in which it is conceived, there is persuasive argument. He,
who advises to return to the good old system of our fathers,
has half gained his audience already. He supposes you to
have wandered, it is true ; but not far, since he encourages
you that it is practicable and is easy to come back. He
touches your pious and filial memories. He appeals to that
powerful prepossession towards the past, which influences the
best natures the most. He points to the " old paths," and our
feet unconsciously turn to take hold on them.
But we must pause. Sir, somewhat, before we legislate on
such sentiments as these. We must distinguish a little in this
matter of the iraitation of our fathers. It is not what they
did, exactly as they did it, in the special and transient circum
stances of their time, that we are to reproduce with a timid and
literal fidelity of resemblance ; but it is what their principles,
their spirit, the general character of their permanent aims and
substantial objects, as exemplified in their actual policy, would
lead them to do now, in the altered circumstances of our time,
— this is what we are to discern and to imitate, if we are to
imitate at all, as becomes them, or as becoraes ourselves. Al
ways, Sir, it is good to be emulous of the purity, the sim
plicity, the patriotisra, and all the heroic virtues of a great and
wise ancestry. Very often is it wise to raeditate their legisla
tion. But before we copy the details of such policy, we must
take many an anxious observation ; we must heave the lead
again and again ; we raust find out on what new seas, along
what unexplored coasts of what new continents, the great cur
rent is bearing us ; we must sweep the field of midnight sky,
to see what stars have risen, and what stars have set; and
thus we must learn what change of duty the change of situa
tion prescribes, and what the navigators of a former age would
do, were they, not we, piloting the ship to-day. To be true

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.
to the principles of our fathers, we must sometime^'j^oUv
desert or substantially modify their details. ^
What, then, are the arguraents by which we are to be^pCTS
suaded to substitute the systera which began in 1789, and en
dured until 1808, for the system which began in 1816, was
matured or nearly so in 1824, and exists now %
Well, in the first place. Sir, we are pointed to an alleged
diversity, to an alleged " opposition " between the spirit and
principles and objects which presided over the establishment of
the former of these systems, and those which presided over the
establishraent of the latter. The forraer, it is said, was fraraed
and founded in a loftier spirit, for better objects, under higher
influences, with " opposite views," on. a sounder principle.
It was framed and founded not by " millionary capitalists
and ambitious politicians," for " political advancement " and
" sectional enrichment," but, as I understand the imphcation,
by statesmen and men of business, fairly, in good faith. In
that system revenue was the principal ; protection, was the
incident ; duties were raoderate, and values were true values.
The latter, the existing system, it is said, on the contrary, was
framed by, or under the influence of, " raillionary capitalists
and aspiring pohticians ; " for " political advanceraent and
sectional enrichment ; " " it raakes protection principal, and
revenue the incident ; " its duties are exorbitant, and its valua
tions fictitious and delusive.
Now, Mr. President, I find myself quite unable to assent to
the historical postulate on which this arguraent proceeds. I do
not agree to this allegation, that a spirit presided over the
legislation of 1789 so opposite to that which produced the
legislation of 1816 and 1824. I raaintain, on the contrary,
that both generations of statesmen, those of 1789 and those of
1816 and 1824, had exactly the same object in view. Both
intended to do one and the same thing ; that is, to foster and
protect adequately the existing mechanical and manufacturing
industry of the country. They lived in different ages of the
world ; in different epochs of our national history ; and this
circumstance prescribed some diversity of instrumental details.
The irapost duties of 1789, sufficient and designed to protect
the domestic labor of 1789, would have been insufficient to
protect the labor of 1824, and therefore in part they were
VOL. II. 16

182 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
enlarged. The impost duties of 1824 would have been un
necessary to the protection of the domestic labor of 1789, and
therefore they were not then resorted to. But of both systems
the objects were the same ; the principle was the same ; the
policy was the same. I cannot denounce one and applaud the
other. I cannot strike a blow at the great men of 1824, that
does not pass through and light on the reverend and charmed
form of the Father of his Country himself. It is all one policy
of protection, one identical policy, mutatis mutandis — as of
the fathers, so of the children ! It is I, then. Sir, who claim
the lights and teachers of the first and purest age of our polit
ical church for our own in this controversy. It is I who
would reconcile the living and the dead,- and on their con
sentaneous authority uphold, if I can, the system of this day.
See then, Mr. President, if this is not so. And in the first
place, let us be sure that we comprehend perfectly the objects
and the policy, the constitutional and econoraical doctrines, of
the founders of our " first systera," as the Senator from Mis
souri has called it, the system of 1789- This is an indispen
sable first step. It is not enough to know and to say that they
laid what you call moderate duties. The question is, on what
principles did they lay them ; for what object ; with what
intent ; on what interpretation of the Constitution ; on what
theory of political economy? Details vary. Principles are
the same yesterday, to-day, and through the ages of a nation's
Hfe. To know, then, in this just and adequate sense, the prin
ciples which lie at the foundation of our first systera, as, after
the honorable Senator, I shall continue to call it, we will turn,
first, to the raodel law of July 4th, 1789. It is entitled
" An act for laying a duty on goods, wares, and merchandises,
imported into the United States." It sets off" with this pre
arable : " Whereas it is necessary for the support of govern
raent, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and
the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties
be laid on goods, wares, and merchandises imported." It was
the second act passed under the new Constitution; the first
having simply " regulated the time and manner of administer
ing certain oaths."
Of this model law, then, Mr. President, I assert: 1. That

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 183
it was as really and truly, in its principle and intention, a pro
tective tariff", as the act of 1824. 2. That its framers raeant
so to construct it as adequately to foster the rising but infant
raanufactures and mechanic arts of America, and thought they
had done so. 3. That it was cast and fashioned into the par
ticular form in which we see it, instead of having been left, as
at first was contemplated, in a very different form, — it was
moulded into this form, expressly and avowedly, for the pur
pose of protection. 4. That of the whole number of duties
which it imposes, more than twenty were made specific duties,
— were made and left what they are, instead of being left ad
valorem duties, as at first was contemplated ; and that this was
done, expressly and avowedly, for the purpose of protection.
5. That of the ad valorem duties imposed by it, from fifteen to
twenty were enumerated, and placed under a higher rate than
the residuary, horizontal, unenumerated level of five per cent.
under which it was at first contemplated to leave them ; and
that this was done, expressly and avowedly, for the purpose of
protection. 6. That fifteen or sixteen articles, which on prin
ciples of revenue should pay duties, and which it was at first
contemplated to subject to duties, are made free, expressly and
avowedly for the purpose of encouraging manufactures and the
mechanic arts. 7- That the act was under consideration of
congress for a period of nearly three months, and was most
laboriously debated and constructed ; that throughout the
whole discussion the constitutional power to impose, vary, in
crease duties even to the point of prohibition, for the express
and declared purpose of protecting, and fostering tlie agricul
ture, the tonnage, the navigation, the commerce, and the raan
ufactures of the nation, — the economical expediency, and the
social and political justice of doing so, were assumed or asserted
by all, and were denied and doubted by no one member of
either branch of the legislature. 8. That the choice was, in
the progress of business, distinctly presented to that congress,
to pass an act in a different form from this, which would pro
duce raore revenue in a shorter time than this, but which
would not afford so much protection ; or to pass tbis, which
would be less iraraediately productive of revenue, but would
afford raore protection to general doraestic labor; and that this
was chosen, expressly and avowedly, because it afforded raore

184 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
adequate protection. 9- That the actual protection afforded
by this act proved to be, as its framers designed it to be,
entirely adequate.
Sir, if I can maintain these assertions, you raay adraire, but
perhaps not approve, and not iraitate that ingenuity of discrim
ination, which praises the spirit that produced this law, yet
denounces the spirit which produced the law of 1824. You
will see, and you will respect, and you will cherish, in both,
one and the same identical policy of protection, growing with
the growth, strengthening with the strength, flexible to the
circumstances of one and the same comraon country. To see,
then, if these assertions are true, I must ask you to trace in
the debates of that day the history of this law, — its origin,
its first form, its changes, its growth, its consummation.
Look beyond its preamble, which, however, most exactly and
completely unfolds and announces its objects ; look beyond
that, to its history. This, I ara aware, is farailiar to raany of
you. I ara afraid it will be tedious to all. Yet to us, to all
of us, to all who would know the constitutional doctrines and
the econoraical and political theories and practice of the age of
Washington; to all who would know whether the legislation of
1824 was in principle new folly or " ancient prudence" —
how far more iraportant is this investigation than the history
of many a council of Trent ; raany a Magna Charta ; many a
statute of Edward, or Henry, or Charles the First ! I will
first relate the history of this law, and then prove and illus
trate it.
It was on the eighth of April, 1789, that Mr. 'Madison
opened the business of constructing a systera of impost- duties,
by proposing to the house to pass a mere brief aud simple
revenue bill. He said that there was not time to prepare a
raore coraprehensive and complete measure ; that the object of
immediate importance was the speediest practicable supply of
the federal treasury ; that to eff'ect that object it was expedient
to pass an act which should intercept the spring importations,
by which raeans raore raoney would be procured, and in shorter
time, than by a more elaborate systera which would be longer
in constructing. In the actual circurastances, despatch, he
thought, was everything. He proposed, therefore, " that con
gress should take, as the basis of the teraporary system which

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 185
he advised to have adopted," the resolution passed by the old
congress of I78S. That resolution iraposed specific duties on
seven enumerated articles, to wit: spirituous liquors, wines,
tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, and pepper, (not one of which, except
rum, could be reckoned of the class of protected articles, no
other of them coming into competition with anything produced
in the United States;) and on all otber articles, without enu
meration, a horizontal ad valorem of five per cent. This reso
lution, " with a clause or two respecting tonnage," he proposed
to adopt as a teraporary raeasure of revenue, adapted to the
actual circurastances of the raoment.
You understand, then, Mr. Madison's first plan. If it had
been adopted, we should have seen, for the first and last time,
that " faultless raonster which the world ne'er saw," a pure,
sheer, mere revenue tariff. Some unintentional and unhappy
incidental protection even such a tariff' would yield, — with
which constitutional and economical purists must have borne
as well as they could. But, upon the whole, it would have
come as near the notion of an unadulterated " revenue meas
ure " as the lot of humanity will adrait. But was it adopted ?
Nothing like it. Sir.
'Upon its being opened, Mr. Fitzsimons, of Pennsylvania,
rose and said that he desired to see a raore permanent system
adopted, and one that should " carry its views much farther ; "
a system sorae way adequate to our whole actual situation, " as
it respects our agriculture, our raanufactures, and our com
merce ; " a system which " should encourage domestic produc
tion, and foster the infant manufactures of Araerica." He
proposed, therefore, that instead of adopting the little revenue
resolution of the old congress, an extended bill of detail should
be framed, proceeding by enumeration of all the subjects of
duty, and ^imposing on each the particular rate which should
blend with revenue the requisite araount of protection.
Here, then, you see, two plans, two bills, diff"erent in object,
different in details, were presented to the choice of congress.
And thereupon a short debate arose on the question, which
general scheme and frarae of irapost law should be adopted.
In support of Mr. Madison's original proposition, it was urged
" that the great object of the raoment was revenue ; that, for
this, despatch was indispensable ; and that the brief revenue
16*

186 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE
resolution, adopted at once, would, by intercepting the expected
importations of the spring, bring more money into the treas
ury, in a shorter time, than a law more carefully matured and
passed at a later day." To this it was answered, by Mr.
Fitzsimons and others, " that it might be admitted, and was ,
probably true, that the plan first proposed would yield a more
immediate supply to an exhausted treasury, but that there were
objects of even raore importance than that, — objects which
that plan could not accoraplish ; that araong these were the
' encouragement of doraestic productions, and the protection
of American raanufactures ; ' and that if time were necessary
to frame a bill which should comprehend and accomplish these,
tirae raust be taken for it, whether the treasury were imme
diately filled or reraained soraewhat longer erapty."
After a short debate, Mr. Madison yielded to the suggestion
of Mr. Fitzsimons ; the basis, which he at first had proposed
to proceed on, was abandoned, and the house engaged as
siduously in the business of constructing a blended revenue
and tariff' bill, by enumeration; each meraber bringing forward
such articles as he deemed worthy of being taken out of, and
raised above the unenumerated level of five per cent., and
moving such duties upon them as he thought proper, whether
on considerations of revenue or protection. The bill was
matured and became a law on the fourth of July, 1789. In
stead of a law of ten lines, laying a half dozen specific duties
upon articles not coraing in competition with any domestic
manufacture, and an ad valorem duty of five per cent, on all
other articles, without enumeration ; it became a law of six
sections ; imposing more than twenty specific and more than
fifteen ad valorem duties, expressly for protection ; admitting
sixteen articles free of duty, which a mere revenue tariff" should
and would tax, — for the sole purpose of encouraging domestic
arts ; laying tonnage duties for the benefit of Araerican ton
nage ; distributing, with a coraprehensive and parental irapar
tiality, its fostering care over the agriculture of the South and
West ; the fisheries and navigation of the East ; the raechan-
ical trades of the villages and towns ; the manufacturing in
dustry of the whole country; over the producer of cotton,
indigo, and herap ; the grain grower and grazier ; fishermen,
and the owners of ships ; workmen in leather, clothing, cord-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.

187

age, iron, glass, paper, and wood, — the universal existing
labor of the young America, — a law exactly and completely
conforming to the announcement of its prearable; laying duties
" for the support of governraent, for the discharge of the debts
of the United States, and the encourageraent and protection of
raanufactures." Such, Sir, is the history of the raodel tariff, the corner-stone
of the Senator's " good old systera " of our fathers. I am
now to prove this ; and I shall do it by a few selections from
the speeches of different gentlemen in that debate, reported in
the first volume of " Debates and Proceedings in Congress,
&c., compiled by Joseph Gales, senior."
I begin with a passage or two indicating Mr. Madison's
original plan, and the reasons assigned for adopting it. Upon
introducing it, he said, —
" The deficiency in our treasury has been too notorious to make it
necessary for me to animadvert upon that subject. Let us content our
selves with endeavoring to remedy the evil."
" The second point to be regarded in adjusting import duties relates to
revenue alone ; and this is the point I mean more particularly to bring
into the view of the committee."
" The propositions made on this subject by congress in 1783 having
received, generally, the approbation of the several States of the Union, in
some form or other, seem well calculated to become the basis of the tem
porary system which I wish the committee to adopt. I am well aware that
the changes which have taken place in many of the States, and in our
public circumstances, since that period, will require, in some degree, a
deviation from the scale of duties then affixed : nevertheless, for the sake
of that expedition which is necessary in order to embrace the spring impor
tations, I should recommend a general adherence to the plan.
" This, with the addition of a clause on tonnage, I will now read, and,
with leave, submit it to the committee, hoping it may meet their approba
tion as an expedient, rendered eligible by the urgent occasion there is for
the speedy supplies of the federal treasury, and a speedy rescue of our
trade from its present anarchy."
He then read the resolution of 1783, which was in these
words : —
Resolved, (as the opinion of this committee,) That the following duties
ought to be levied on goods, wares, and merchandise, imported into the
United States, viz : On rum, per gallon, — of a dollar ; on all other
spirituous liquors, — ; on molasses, — ; on Madeira wine, — ; on all
other wines, — ; on common bohea teas, per lb., — ; on all other teas, — ;
on pepper, — ; on brown sugars, — ; on loaf sugars, — ; on all other

188 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
sugars, — ; on cocoa and coffee, — ; on all other articles, ¦^- per cent, on
their value at the time and place of importation."
And after Mr. Fitzsimons had disclosed his preference for
a more comprehensive and protective measure, and Mr.
Madison had yielded to the suggestion, he (Mr. Madison)
said, —
" From what has been suggested by the gentlemen that have spoken
on the subject before us, I am led to apprehend we shall be under the
necessity of travelling further into an investigation of principles than
what I supposed would be necessary, or had in contemplation when 1
offered the propositions before you.
" It was my view to restrain the first essay on this subject principally
to the object of revenue, and make this rather a temporary expedient than
anything permanent. I see, however, that there are strong exceptions
against deciding immediately on a part of the plan, which I had the honor
to bring forward, as well as against an application to the resources men
tioned in the list of articles just proposed by the gentleman from Penn
sylvania. " I presume that, however much we may be disposed to promote domestic
manufactures, we ought to pay some regard to the present policy of ob
taining revenue. It may be remarked, also, that by fixing on a tempo
rary expedient for this purpose, we may gain more than we shall hse hj
suspending the consideration of the other subject until we obtain fuller in
formation of the state of our manufactures. We have at this time the
strongest motives for turning our attention to the point I have mentioned;
every gentleman sees that the prospect of our harvest from the spring im-
portatio7is is daily vanishing ; and if the committee delay levying and
collecting an impost until a system of protecting duties shall be perfected,
there will be no importations of any consequence on which the law is to
operate, because hy that time all the spring vessels will have arrived.
Therefore, from a pursuit of this policy, we shall suffer a loss equal to the
surplus which might be expected from a system of higher duties."
See, too, how others understood Mr. Madison's first propo
sition. Speaking of it, Mr. Boudinot said, —
^ " The plan which he has submitted to the committee appears to be
simple and sufficiently complete /or the present purpose ; I shall, therefore,
for my own part, be content with it."
Mr. Lawrence concurred in this construction of it : —
" If I am not mistaken, the honorable mover of the plan viewed it as a^
temporary system, particularly calculated to embrace the spring importa
tions ; hence it may be proper to lay a duty at a certain rate per cent.
on the value of all articles, without attempting an enumeration of any ;
because, if we attempt to specify every article, it will expose us to a ques-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 189
tion which must require more time than can be spared, to obtain the ob
ject that appears to be in the view of the committee.
" By adopting the plan I have mentioned, you will embrace the spring
importation, and give time for digesting and maturing one upon more per
fect principles ; and, as the proposed system is intended to be but a tem
porary one, that I esteem to be best which requires the least time to
form it."
And Mr. White, opposing Mr. Fitzsiraons's suggestion in
favor of substituting a more mature raeasure in place of Mr.
Madison's, observed, —
" I am inclined to think, that entering so minutely into the detail wUl
consume too much of our time, and thereby lose us a greater sum than
the additional impost on the last-mentioned articles will bring in ; be
cause there may be doubts whether many of them are capable of bearing
an increased duty.
" This law would continue until mature deliberation, ample discussion,
and full information, enabled us to complete a perfect system of rev
enue ; for, in order to charge specified articles of manufacture, so as
to encourage our domestic ones, it will be necessary to examine the
present state of each throughout the Union. This will certainly be a
work of labor and time, and will perhaps require more of each than the
committee have now in their power."
I have read raore than enough to show you the nature and
objects of Mr. Madison's first revenue resolution. Let me now
advert to a selection or two which may display the nature
and grounds and objects of the plan presented by Mr. Fitz
simons in opposition, and which was approved by congress.
In introducing it, Mr. Fitzsimons said, —
" I observe, Mr. Chairman, by what the gentlemen have said, who
have spoken on the subject before you, that the proposed plan of revenue
is viewed by them as a temporary system, to be continued only until
proper materials are brought forward and arranged in more perfect form.
I confess. Sir, that I carry my views on this subject much further ; that
I earnestly wish such a one which, in its operation, will be sorae way ad
equate to our present situation, as it respects our agriculture, our manu
factures, and our commerce.
"I have prepared myself with an additional number of enumerated
articles, which I wish subjoined to those already mentioned in' the motion
on your table. Among these are some calculated to encourage the pro
ductions of our country, and protect our infant manufactures ; besides
others tending to operate as sumptuary restrictions upon articles which
are often termed those of luxury."
He therefore off'ered the following resolution: —
" Resolved, (as the opinion of this committee,) That the following

190 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
duties ought to be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise, imported into
the United States."
I will not read the entire list of articles enumerated in his
resolution, but among them were upwards of thirty coming in
competition with those produced or made in the United States,
the production and raanufacture of which was intended to be
encouraged. He was followed and supported by his colleague, Mr. Hart-
ly, who said, —
" I have observed, Sir, from the conversation of the members, that it is
in the contemplation of some to enter on this business in a limited and
partial manner, as it relates to revenue alone ; but, for my own part, I
wish to do it on as broad a bottom as is at this time practicable. The ob
servations of the honorable gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Tucker]
may have weight in some future stage of the business, for the article of
tonnage will not probably be determined for several days, before whieh
time his colleagues may arrive and be consulted in the manner he wishes;
but surely no argument derived from that principle can operate to dis
courage the committee from taking such measures as will tend to protect
and promote our domestic manufactures. If we consult the history of the
ancient world, we shall see that they have thought proper, for a long time
past, to give great encouragement to the establishment of manufactures,
by laying such partial duties on the importation of foreign goods as to
give the home manufactures a considerable advantage in the price when
brought io market. It is also well known to this committee, that there are
many articles that will bear a higher duty than others, which are to re
main in the common mass, and be taxed with a certain impost ad valorem.
From this view of the subject, I think it both politic and just that the
fostering hand of the general government should extend to all those manu
factures which will tend to national utility. I am therefore sorry that gen
tlemen seem to fix their mind to so early a period as 1783 ; for we very
well know our circumstances are much changed since that time : we had
then but few manufactures among us, and the vast quantities of goods that
flowed in upon us from Europe, at the conclusion of the war, rendered
those few almost useless ; since then we have been forced by necessity,
and various other causes, to increase our domestic manufactures to such a
degree as to be able to furnish some in sufficient quantity to answer the
consumption of the whole Union, while others are daily growing into
importance. Our stock of materials, is, in many instances, equal to the
greatest demand, and our artisans sufficient to work them up, even for
exportation. In these cases, I take it to be the policy of every en
lightened nation to give their manufactures that degree of encouragement
necessary to perfect them, without oppressing the other parts of the com
munity ; and under this encouragement, the industry of the manufacturer
will be employed to add to the wealth of the nation. Many of the arti
cles in the list proposed by my worthy colleague will have this tendency;
and therefore I wish them to be received and considered by the comrait-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. I91
tee ; if sufficient information cannot be obtained as to the circumstances
of any particular manufacture, so as to enable the committee to determine
a proper degree of encouragement, it may be relinquished ; but at present
it will, perhaps, be most advisable to receive the whole."
And Mr. Madison, yielding to these and other considera
tions in favor of a more extended and coraprehensive scherae
of iraposts than his own first plan, proceeded to unfold, in a
speech of rauch clearness and frankness, the principles upon
which such a scherae shpuld be constructed. Declaring hira
self then in favor, as the general rule, of a " very free systera
of commerce," he said, —
" If my general principle is a good one, that commerce ought to be free,
and labor and industry left at large to find its proper object, the only
thing which remains will be to discover the exceptions that do not come
within the rule I have laid down. I agree with the gentleman from Penn
sylvania, that there are exceptions, important in themselves, and which
claim the particular attention of the committee. Although the freedom of
commerce would be advantageous to the world, yet, in some particulars,
one nation might suffer to benefit others, and this ought to be for the gen
eral good of society.
" If Araerica were to leave her ports perfectly free, and make no dis
crimination between vessels owned by her citizens and those owned by
foreigners, while other nations raake this discrimination, it is obvious that
such policy would go to exclude American shipping altogether from for
eign ports, and she would be materially affected in one of her most im
portant interests. To this we may add another consideration, that by
encouraging the means of transporting our productions with facility, we
encourage the raising them : and this object, I apprehend, is likely to be
kept in view by tbe general government.
"Duties laid on imported articles may have an effect which comes
within the idea of national prudence. It may happen that materials for
manufactures may grow up without any encouragement for this purpose.
It has been the case in some of the States ; but in others regulations have
been provided, and have succeeded in producing some establishments,
which ought not to be allowed to perish, from the alteration which has taken
place. It would be cruel to neglect them, and divert their industry to other
channels ; for it is not possible for the hand of man to shift from one em
ployment to another, without being injured by the change. There may
be some manufactures, which, being once formed, can advance towards
perfection, without any adventitious aid, while others, for want of the fos
tering hand of government will be unable to go on at all. Legislative
attention will therefore be necessary to collect the proper objects for this
purpose, and this will form another exception to my general principle.
" Upon the whole, as I think, some of the propositions may be productive
of revenue, and some may protect our domestic manufactures, though the
latter subject ought not to be too confusedly blended with the former, I
hope the committee will receive them, and let them lie over, in order that

192 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
we may have time to consider how far they are consistent with justice and
policy." You see, then, that in place of the original mere revenue
measure, it was proposed to substitute a law which should
reconcile with the purpose and the eff'ect of raising revenue the
purpose and eff'ect of an adequate protection of domestic laboj.
This proposition was adopted, and thereupon the house pro
ceeded to frarae a bill of enuraerations and of discrirainations.
After Mr. Madison had intiraated his opinion that a raore elab
orate measure than he at first designed was made necessary,
and after Mr. Fitzsiraons's motion, and his Hst of enumerated
articles had been received and was pending, Mr. Goodhue
said, —
" I think, when the original motion was introduced, it was only intended
as a temporary expedient ; but, from what has fallen from the gentleman
on this subject, Jam led to believe that idea is abandoned, and a permanent
system is to be substituted in its place. I do not know that this is the best
mode ofthe two, but perhaps it may take no more time than the other, if we
apply ourselves wiih assiduity to the task."
In the same stage of the business, —
" Mr. Clymer submitted it to the consideration of the committee, how
far it was best to bring propositions forward in this way. Not that he
objected to this mode of encouraging manufactures and obtaining revenue,
by combining the two objects in one bill. He was satisfied that a political
necessity existed ybr both the one and the other, and it would not be amiss
to do it in this way, but perhaps the business would be more speedily
accomplished by entering upon it systematicaOy."
And Mr. Boudinot said, —
" The subject in debate was originally brought forward as a temporary
expedient to obtain revenue to support the exigencies of the Union. It has
been changed by successive motions for amendment ; and the idea of a
permanent system, to embrace every object connected with commerce, mami-
factures, and revenue, is held up in its stead.
" Let us take, then, the resolution of congress, in 1783, as presented
by the honorable gentleman from Virginia, (Mr. Madison,) and make it
the basis of our system, adding only such protecting duties as are neces
sary to support the manufactures established by the legislatures of the
manufacturing States."
The house then plunged at once into the details of a revenue
and protective tariff. Every member presented such articles
as he thought deserving of enumeration for encouragement by

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 193'
a particular duty ; and his motion was resisted and supported
very rauch as sirailar raotions are supported and resisted in the
tariff debates of our day. It would carry rae too far to read
this part of the history of the law, but a few passages, which
raight seem gathered from " Niles's Weekly," Register of
1828, (so little is there new under the sun, so imraortal is
truth, so iraraortal is error, so narrow is the circle of identical,
recurrent ideas in which these discussions go round and round,)
a few passages will not be irrelevant to ray purpose.
Hear the debate about the proposed duty on steel : —
" Mr. Lee moved to strike out this duty ; observing that the consump
tion of steel was very great, and essentially necessary to agricultural im
provements. He did not believe any gentleman would contend that
enough of this article to answer consuraption coidd be fabricated in any
part of the Union ; hence it would operate as an oppressive, though an
indirect tax upon agriculture ; and any tax, whether direct or indirect,
upon this interest, at this juncture, would be unwise and irapolitic."
" Mr. Tucker joined the gentleman in his opinion, observing that it was
impossible for some States to get it but by iraportation from foreign coun
tries. He conceived it more deserving a bounty to increase the quantity,
than an impost which would lessen the consuraption and make it dearer
also." " Mr. Clymer replied, that the manufacture of steel in Araerica was
rather in its infancy ; but as all the materials necessary to make it were
the produce of almost every State in the Union, and as the manufacture
was already established, and attended with iionsiderable success, he deemed
it prudent to emancipate our country frora the manacles in which she was
held by foreign manufacturers. A furnace in Philadelphia, with a very
small aid from the legislature of Pennsylvania, made three hundred tons
in two years, and now makes at the rate of two hundred and thirty tons
annually, and with a little further encourageraent would supply enough
for the consumption of the Union. He hoped, therefore, gentleraen would
be disposed, under these considerations, to extend a degree of patronage
to a manufacture which a raoment's reflection would convince them was
highly deserving protection."
" Mr. Madison thought the object of selecting this article to be solely the
encouragement of the manufacture, and not revenue ; for on any other
consideration, it would be more proper, as observed by the gentleman
from Carolina, (Mr. Tucker,) to give a bounty on the importation. It
was so materially connected with the improvement of agriculture and
other manufactures, that he questioned its propriety even on that score.
A duty would tend to depress many raechanic arts in the proportion
that it protected this; he thought it best to reserve this article to the
non-enumerated ones, where it .would be subject to a five per cent, ad
valorem." " Mr. Fitzsimons. Some States were, from local circumstances, better
VOL. n. 17

194 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
situated to carry on the manufacture than others, and would derive some
little advantage on this account in the commencement of the business.
But, laying aside local distinctions, what operates to the benefit of one
part, in establishing useful institutions, will eventually operate to the ad
vantage of the whole."
" Suppose five shillings per hundred weight was imposed, it might be,
as stated, a partial duty, hut would riot ihe evil be soon overbalanced by the
establishment of such an important manufacture'^ — a great and principal
manufacture for every agricultural country, but particularly useful in the
United States."
On beer, ale, and porter : —
" Mr. Fitzsimons meant to make an alteration in this article, by distin
guishing beer, ale, and porter, imported in casks, from what was imported
in bottles. He thought this manufacture one highly deserving of encour
agement. If the morals of the people were to be improved by what en
tered into their diet, it would be prudent in the National Legislature to
encourage the manufacture of malt liquors. The small protecting duties
laid in Pennsylvania had a great effect towards ihe establishment of brew
eries ; they no longer imported this article, but, on the contrary, exported
considerable quantities, and, in two or three years, with the fostering aid
of government, would be able to furnish enough for the whole consump
tion of the United States. He moved nine cents per gallon."
" Mr. Lawrence seconded the motion. He would have this duty so
high as to give a decided preference to American beer ; it would tend
also to encourage agriculture, because the malt and hops consumed in fhe
manufacture were the produce of our own grounds."
" Mr. Sinnickson declared himself a friend of this manufacture, and
thought if the duty was laid high enough to effect a prohibition, the manw-
facture would increase, and cf consequence, the price he lessened. He
considered it of importance, inasmuch as the materials were produced in
the country, and tended to advance the agricultural interest."
" Mr. Madison moved to lay an impost of eight cents on all beer im
ported. He did not think this sum would give a monopoly, hut hoped it
would be such an encouragement as to induce the manufacture to take deep
root in every State in the Union ; in this case, it would produce the col
lateral good hinted at by the gentleman from New Jersey, which, in his
opinion, was an object well worthy of being attended to."
On candles : —
" Mr. Fitzsimons moved to lay a duty of two cents on all candles of
tallow, per pound."
"Mr. Tucker observed, that some States were under the necessity of
importing considerable quantities of this article also, while others had
enough, and more than enough, for their own consumption ; therefore the
burden would be partially borne by such States."
" Mr. Fitzsimons. The manufacture of candles is an important manu
facture, and far advanced towards perfection. I have no doubt but, in a
few years, we shall be able to furnish sufficient to supply the consumption

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 195
for every part ofthe continent. In Pennsylvania we have a duty of two
pence per pound ; and under the operation of this small encouragement
the manufacture has gained considerable strength. We no longer import
candles from Ireland or England, of whom, a few years ago, we took con
siderable quantities; the necessity of continuing those encouragements
which the State legislatures have deemed proper, exist in a considerable
degree ; therefore it will be politic in the governraent of the United
States to continue such duties till their object is accomplished."
" Mr. Boudinot apprehended that most States imported considerable
quantities of this article from Russia and Ireland; he expected they
would be made cheaper than they could be imported, if a sraall encour
agement was held out by the government, as the materials were to be
had in abundance in our country."
" Mr. Lawrence thought that, if candles were an object of considerable
importation, they ought to be taxed for the sake of obtaining revenue ;
and, if they were not imported in considerable quantities, the burden upon
the consumer would be small, while it tended to cherish a valuable manu
facture." On coal : —
"Mr. Bland, of Virginia, informed the committee that there were
mines opened in Virginia capable of supplying the whole of the United
States ; and, if some restraint was laid on the importation of foreign coal,
those mines might be worked to advantage. He thought it needless to
insist upon the advantages resulting from a colliery, as a supply for culi
nary and mechanical purposes, and as a nursery to train up sea,men for
a navy. He moved three cents a bushel."
On herap : —
" Mr. Moore declared the Southern States were well calculated for the
cultivation of hemp, and, from certain circumstances, well inclined thereto.
He conceived it the duty of the committee to pay as much respect to the
encouragement and protection of husbandry (the most important of all
interests in the United States) as they did to manufactures."
" Mr. Scott stated a fact or two ; being, perhaps, as well acquainted
with the Western country as any member of the committee. Tlie lands
along the frontiers, he could assure the committee, were well calculated
for the cultivation of this plant ; it is a production that will bear carriage
by land better than any other, tobacco not excepted. He believed an
encouragement of the kind now moved for would bring, in a year or two,
vast quantities from that country, at little expense, to Philadelphia, even
from the waters of the Ohio ; the inhabitants expect some encouragement,
and will be grateful for it."
" Mr. White. If the legislature take no notice of this article, the
people will be led to believe it is not an object worthy of encouragement,
and the spirit of cultivation will be damped; whereas, if a small duty only
was laid, it might point out to them that it was desirable, and would in
duce an increase of the quantity."
"Mr. Moore. By the encouragement given to manufactures you raise

196 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
them in price, while a competition is destroyed, which tended to the ad
vantage of agriculture. He thought the manufacturing interest ought not
to stand in the way of the other ; but, as the committee had agreed to
'give it encouragement, he hoped the other would receive its share of
legislative support."
" Mr. Burke thought it proper to suggest to the committee what might
be the probable effect of the proposed raeasure in the State he repre
sented, (South Carolina,) and the adjoining one, (Georgia). The staple
products of that part of the Union were hardly worth cultivation, on ac
count of their fall in price ; the planters are therefore disposed to pursue
some other. The lands are certainly well adapted to the growth of hemp,
and he had no doubt but its culture would be practised with attention.
Cotton is likewise in contemplation among ihem; and, if good seed could
be procured, he hoped it might succeed. But the low, strong, rice lands
would produce hemp in abundance, — many thousand tons even this year,
if it was not so late in the season. He liked the idea of laying a low duty
now, and encouraging it against the time when a supply might be had
from our own cultivation."
On glass : — •
" Mr. Carroll moved to insert window and other glass. A raanufacture
of this article was begun in Maryland, and attended with considerable
success ; if the legislature were to grant a sraall encourageraent, it would
be permanently established ; the raaterials were to be found in the coun
try in sufficient quantities to answer the most extensive demands."
On paper : —
" Mr. Clyraer informed the house that the manufacture of paper was
an important one ; and, having grown up under legislative encouragement,
it will be wise to continue it."
On wool cards : —
"Mr. Ames introduced wool cards, with observing that they were
manufactured to the eastward as good and as cheap as the imported
ones." " Mr. Clymer mentioned that, in the State of Pennsylvania, the manu
facture was carried to great perfection, and enough could be furnished to
supply the demand. A duty of fifty cents per dozen was imposed on
wool cards."
Prohibitory duties were moved, without a word of doubt,
frora any quarter, of the constitutional power, and, in some
cases, the economical expediency, of imposing them. Thus, —
" Mr. Bland, of Virginia, thought that very little revenue was likely to
be collected on the article of beef, let the duty be more or less ; and, as
it was to be had in sufficient quantities within the United States, perhaps
a tax amountitig to a prohibition would be proper."

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR.

197

It was rejected as totally unnecessary, " nothing being to be
apprehended frora rivalship."
On raanufactured tobacco, —
" Mr. Sherman moved six cents, as he thought the duty ought to amount
to a prohibition. This was agreed to."
I have detained the senate longer than I could have wished,
upon these proofs and illustrations of the constitutional and
econoraical doctrines which corapose the foundation of our
" old systera " of impost duties. They establish conclusively,
if I rightly apprehend thera, that in every just sense of the
language, in principle, airas, and forras, the " raodel law " was
a protective tariff. It was as much so as the law of 1824.
It assumed and asserted exactly the sarae theory of power, of
right, of duty, of expediency. It sought to bring such a sum
of money into the treasury as the wants of administration
exacted ; but it sought to effect this by such arrangeraents of
detail, by such discrirainations of high and low duties, by pro
hibition here, by total exeraption there, as should secure to the
vast and various labor of Araerica, on the land, in the shop,
on the sea, a clear and adequate advantage over the labor of
the alien nations of the world. The proofs that these opinions
and these intentions presided over and controlled the whole
law, and every part of it, are everywhere, — in its prearable,
in its provisions, in its history, origin, growth, successive
changes, and final form. Sir, the very day of its passage,
July 4th, 1789, seems to raark the energetic " Araerican-
ism " of its nature !
But it has been a hundred tiraes repeated in the debate, that
the duties laid by this law are moderate duties. Much arith
metical pains have been wasted in calculating their average per
cent. I say wasted ; for, in the first place, we cannot reduce
the nuraerous specific duties, in which it abounds, to their
equivalent ad valorems, because we do not know the prices of
1789 ; in the next place, an average, ever so exactly calcu
lated, conveys no idea of the degree of protection secured by
a highly discriminating tariff; and, finally, however raoderate
may be the duties of this law, it is not the less, in principle,
in intent, in its constitutional and economical doctrines, and in
its effect, a protective tariff. What is such a tariff? What
17*

198 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
makes it such 1 Where, and how, do you draw the line be
tween it and a revenue tariff 1 Of two tariffs, each yielding
about the same supply to the treasury, by what standard, by
what tests, do you pronounce that one is a measure of finance,
the other a measure of protection 1 Sir, although these two
things run very much into each other, although they have a
good deal in common, and all definitions are inadequate and
are hazardous, yet are they essentiaUy distinct; and I wifl
venture to subrait, that, by universal consent, a tariff which
looks to the protection of domestic labor against foreign labor,
as one iraportant, substantial, influencive object and purpose,
either jointly with, or in exclusion of, the object and purpose
of revenue ; a tariff which, in nuraerous instances, selects a
certain form and a certain rate of duties, rather than another
and lower, upon the avowed ground that the forra and rate
chosen are better for protection than the form and rate re
jected, though no better and not as good for revenue ; which
lays sorae duties of prohibition, and asserts the power to lay
others ; which lays many duties which, in and by theraselves,
are expected and designed to check particular kinds of impor
tations, in order to give the domestic producer an advantage
in the raarket over the foreign producer, and thus to diminish
the revenue to be drawn from those particular and numerous
sources ; and which does all this, to a greater degree than an
equally or raore effective revenue tariff would do it, in consid
eration and conteraplation of prospective ultimate advantages
to result from the ¦ establishraent of certain doraestic employ
ments — a tariff' which does all this, upon these reasons, is a
protecting tariff, or there is no such thing in any legislative
code in the world. I do not care whether the duties are high
or low ; how they average, or what are the extremes. Such
a tariff' asserts the constitutional power, the social and pohtical
right, and the econoraical expediency of so regulating foreign
commerce, of so gathering in revenue, as to bring to life, and
to jceep alive, the whole or particular forms of domestic labor,
as distinct frora foreign labor ; and it asserts it practically.
This covers the whole ground. Such a tariff', exactly, is this
of 1789. Such a tariff totally rejects the doctrine which has
been maintained in the debate, that of several duties on the
sarae subject, each yielding the sarae araount of revenue, the

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. I99
lowest is to be preferred. It adopts and exemplifies the
directly opposite doctrine, that, even where the highest will
yield less revenue, it raay wisely, justly, constitutionally be
preferred, because it will produce a corapensation of other
good in another way. It rejects the doctrine asserted in this
debate, that under our system protection is merely an acci
dental incident to revenue, to be endured, not favored ; it
declares, on the contrary, that the two purposes of revenue
and protection, raay be harmoniously blended ; may be re
garded as of equal iraportance ; that one may predominate in
this duty, and another in that ; that it is a legitimate and a
noble enterprise of statesraanship, to transform the very evil
and burden of taxation into a means of individual corafort
and enjoyraent and national greatness and glory. It teaches
the lawgiver, that instead of bewildering himself, and wasting
his precious time in trying to find the revenue maximum of
duty, — more hopeless and raore useless than the search after
the quadrature of the circle or the perpetual motion, — he
should just, sincerely, honestly, and constantly propose this
problem to himself : How can I procure that amount of reve
nue which an economical administration of government de
mands, in such manner as most impartially and most com-
I pletely to develop and foster the universal industrial capacities
of the country, of whose vast raaterial interests I am honored
with the charge 1
Whether its duties are high or low, then, this is a protect
ing tariff. But who knows whether that portion of them
which is specific is high or low 1 We have no prices current,
and no other proof of the prices of that day ; and without
such proof how can you reduce these duties to their equivalent
ad valorem ? I read a passage ffom one of the speeches of
Mr. Bland, of Virginia, during the debate, from which it
would seem that some of the rates would be called high even
now : —
" The enumerated articles in this bill are very numerous ; they are
taxed from fifty per cent, downwards ; the general mass pays five per
cent." We are told in this discussion that thirty per cent, and thirty-
three and one third per cent, are the raaxiraura of revenue duty.
Here were fifty per cent, duties, and in the specific form, and

200 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
therefore certain of collection ; while the ad valorem forms, on
foreign values, are as certain to be evaded and defrauded.
But, Mr. Presideut, there is another answer to the sugges
tion that these duties were raoderate. Sir, in the actual cir
curastances of the time, they were entirely sufficient for the
protection of the agricultural, navigating, commercial, manu
facturing, and mechanical industry, which they were intended
to protect. They effected their object perfectly. And when
you consider the circumstances, how plain, coarse, hardy, sim
ple, were the existing mechanical manufacturing employments
of the country ; how unlike the various, refined, and sensitive
forras, which in a later age they put on ; that they were, very
rauch, manufactures of wood into cabinet-ware, furniture, car
riages, and ships ; of leather, in tanneries ; of iron in black
smiths' shops ; of cloth, from cotton, wool, and flax, chiefly in
private families ; that they were many of thera very far in the
interior ; that there was not yet a single cotton raill, and per
haps not a single woollen mill, in the country ; that thus they
exacted no large accumulations of capital, nor high degrees
of skill slowly acquired, nor expensive raachinery continually
changing ; and when you consider, too, that England, that all
Europe, was just about to rush into the wars of the French
revolution, drawing the sword which was never to be sheathed
until night should fall on the hushed and drenched field of
Waterloo — in view of these circumstances, you will not won
der that even these duties were sufficient. The statesmen of
that time. Sir, raeant to protect domestic labor ; they knew how
to do it, and they did it. In point of fact, from 1789 to 1808,
the progress of raanufactures was slow but sure. Then began
a new era, of which I will speak in its place.
I think, Mr. President, that it is scarcely necessary to look
beyond this survey of the history of the law of 1789, to dis
cover the spirit, principles, and aims, which presided in and
framed it. Let rae give you, however, a little supplementary
evidence to prove that I have not misconceived its essential
structure and nature. Hear, first, in what terms Washington
could speak of it, and of the subsequent and kindred legis
lation upon the sarae policy. In his last Address, in December,
1796, he says, —
" Congress have repeatedly, and not without success, directed their atten-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. QQl
tion to the encouragement of manufactures. The object is of too much
consequence not to insure a continuance of their efforts in every way that
shall appear eligible. Ought our country to remain dependent on foreign
supply, precarious, because liable to be interrupted ? If the necessary
article should in this mode cost more in time of peace, will not the security
and independence thence arising form an ample compensation ? "
That great raan thought, you perceive, that even if a pro
tective policy should enhance the prices of a time of peace,
security and independence were equivalents with which a nation
might be content. Sir, we have won the equivalents, and yet
we do not pay the compensation. The " necessary article
costs " less, not more ; yet is our security raore absolute, our
independence raore real, our greatness more steadfast.
See, too, how Mr. Jefferson, in 1802, describes the policy,
which, when he wrote, had been pursued from 1789, for thir
teen years : —
"To cultivate peace and maintain commerce and navigation in all
their lawful enterprises, and to protect the manufactures adapted io our
circumstances, .are (among others) the landmarks by which to guide our
selves in all our proceedings. By continuing to make these the rule of
our action, we shall endear to our countrymen the true principles of the
Constitution, and promote an union of sentiment and of action equally aus
picious to their happiness and safety."
And Mr. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury, in 1816, in his
very able report to congress upon the subject of a tariff of
duties, remarks, —
" There are few if any govemments which do not regard the establish
ment of domestic manufactures as a chief object of public policy. The
United States have always so regarded it. In the earliest acts of con
gress which were passed after the adoption of the present Constitution,
the obligation of providing, by duties on imports, for the discharge of
the public debts, is expressly connected with the policy of encouraging
and protecting manufactures."
And Mr. Madison, looking back, in 1828, to a scene in
which his part had been so conspicuous, says, in his letter to
Mr. Cabell : " That the encouragement of raanufactures was
an object of the power to regulate trade, is proved by the use
made of the power for that object, in the first session of the
first congress under the Constitution ; when among the mem
bers present were so many who had been merabers of the
federal convention which fraraed the Constitution, and of the

202 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
State conventions which ratified it ; each of these classes con
sisting also of merabers who had opposed and who had es
poused the Constitution in its actual, form. It does not appear,
from the printed proceedings of congress on that occasion
that the power was denied by any of them. And it may be
remarked, that raembers from "Virginia, in particular, as well
of the Anti-federal as the Federal party, the names then dis
tinguishing those who had opposed and those who had approved
the Constitution, did not hesitate to propose duties and to
suggest even prohibitions in favor of several articles of her
productions. By one, a duty was proposed on mineral coal, in
favor of the Virginia coal pits ; by another, a duty on hemp
was proposed, to encourage the growth of that article ; and by
a third, a prohibition even of foreign beef was suggested, as a
raeasure of sound policy."
And now, Mr. President, let rae say, passing strange it
would have been, if that congress had not raade just such a
law ; had not founded just such a system ! Composed as it
was, to so large an extent, of raerabers of the convention which
had fraraed the new Constitution, and of the conventions which
had adopted it, — fresh, all of thera, from the people, and inti
mately farailiar with the evils, the fears, and the hopes, of which
the recent governraent was born : the excessive iraportations ;
the exhausting drain of specie to pay for thera ; the raountain
weight of debt not yet paid to the foreign manufacturer and
mechanic ; the depression of labor, the derangement of currency,
the decline of trade ; penetrated profoundly with the certain
knowledge that a leading, a paramount object, held universally
in view throughout the great effort, just crowned with success,
to frame a new Constitution, was to insure the capacity and the
will to extend governmental protection to domestic labor, — such
a congress, thus adraonished, thus enlightened, could not help
making such a law and founding such a system. They would
not have dared to go home without doing so ! I once, Mr.
President, in this place, on a former occasion, and with a dif
ferent purpose, atterapted to collect and corabine, and to exhibit
under a single view, the proofs contained in the writings, such
as they are, which appeared in this country between the peace
of 1783 and the adoption of the Constitution, tending to show
that a policy of protection by means of duties on the produc-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 203
tions of foreign labor was most prominent among the beneficial
instrumentalities which the new governraent was expected to
possess and exert, and araong the controlling inducements to
its establishment. Those proofs are very numerous ; they are
very widely scattered over raany hundred pages 6i newspapers
and larger periodical publications, and over a space of six
years and more, during which the public mind was in a state
of unexampled agitation, anxiety, and activity ; they consist of
essays, addresses, the proceedings of public meetings, and the
like ; and they are contributed in almost an equal proportion
by every part of the country, although the largest number
perhaps come from the central States. Taken altogether, and
making every allowance for the fact that a great deal of the
writing and speech, in which the opinions, hopes, fears, and in
tentions of that age were embodied, has perished; and that
among the opinions and intentions thus expressed, but of
whose existence no conteraporary record is left, there may
have been some of a different character — taken altogether,
they prove as clearly that a leading, raain, prorainent purpose
of that generation of our fathers was to create a governraent
which could and should protect Araerican labor, by regulating
the introduction of the products of foreign labor, by prohibit
ing thera, by subjecting thera to duties of discriraination, and
by such other policy as the accomplishraent of the object
should prescribe — they prove this as clearly as you can prove
out of the Irish newspapers of this day that Catholic Ireland
is agitating for repeal. Sir, I shall not trouble the senate
with the repetition of all or raany of the proofs which I at
that tirae exhibited ; but I cannot resist the temptation of re
minding you how North Carolina and South Carolina could
reason then on the' nature and the cure of the evils which bore
down the young America to the dust ; on the difference be
tween manufacturing abroad and manufacturing at horae, —
the difference to national wealth, to currency, to true and du
rable public and private prosperity ; on the general policy of
the protection of Araerican labor, by a raore restrained irapor
tation of the productions of foreign labor. I read for that
purpose, first, a selection or two from certain letters written
in North Carolina in 1787, which I find in the Araerican

204 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Museum for August, I787. The name of the writer is not
given, but he sets out by declaring, —
" That his complaints are not occasioned by personal misfortunes ; but
he finds himself a member of a great family ; he interests himself as a
brother in the happiness of his fellow-citizens, and he suffers when they
are grieved."
The annunciation of his subject marks his fitness to dis
cuss it.
" We are going to consider whether the administration of government,
in these infant States, is to be a systera of patchwork and a series of ex
pedients — whether a youthful empire is to be supported, like the walls
of a tottering ancient palace, by shores and temporary props, or by meas
ures which may prove effectual and lasting — measures which may im
prove by use and strengthen by age. We are going to consider whether
we shall deserve to be a branch of the most poor, dishonest, and con
temptible, or of the most flourishing, independent, and happy nation on
the face of the earth."
And what do you think is his " measure which is to improve
by use, and strengthen by age " ? Why, exactly, the encour
agement of domestic manufactures, by taxes on foreign manu
factures. " The more I consider the progress of credit and the increase of wealth
in foreign nations, the more fully am I convinced that paper money must
prove hurtful to this country ; that we cannot be relieved from our debts
except by promoting domestic manufactures."
Having adverted to the vast accuraulation of our foreign
debt since the peace, and to the discreditable and startling fact
that it had been contracted for nuraerous articles of necessity
which we could better produce, and nuraerous articles of lux
ury which we could better dispense with, he proceeds : —
" Let us turn our attention to manufactures, and the staple of our
country will soon rise to its proper value, for we have already glutted
every foreign market. By this expedient, instead of using fictitious
paper, we shall soon obtain hard money sufficient ; instead of toiling in
the field, and becoming poor, that we may enrich the manufactures of
other countries, we shall prosper by our labor, and enrich our own citi
zens." " Every domestic manufacture is cheaper than a foreign one, for this
plain reason : by the first nothing is lost to the country ; by the other,
the whole value is lost, — it is carried away, never to return. It is per
fectly indifferent to this State or to the United States, what may be the
price of domestic manufactures, because that price remains in the coun
try."

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 205
"All wise governments" (such is his argument, page 124) "have
thought it their duty, on special occasions, to offer bounties for the en
couragement of domestic manufactures ; but an excise on foreign goods
must operate as a bounty." " I have said that an excise is more favor
able to the poor than a land or poll tax. I will venture an additional
sentiment : there never was a government in which an excise could be
of so much use as in the United States of America. In all other coun
tries, taxes are considered as grievances. In the United States, an excise
on foreign goods would not be a grievance : like medicine to a sick man,
it would give us strength ; it would close that wasteful drain by which
our honor and our wealth are consumed. What though money was not
wanted, — though we did not owe a florin to any foreign nation, — though
we had no domestic debt, — and though the expenses of civil government
could be supported for many years without a tax, still it raay be ques
tioned whether an excise would not be desirable. It would certainly be
the best expedient for promoting domestic manufactures ; and the con
dition in which we now live, our general dependence on a foreign coun
try for arms and clothing, is dishonorable — it is extremely dangerous."
" It is the duty of the statesman either to check or to promote the sev
eral streams of commerce by taxes or bounties, so as to render them
profltable to the nation. Thus it happened in Massachusetts. A tax of
twenty-five per cent, was lately imposed on nails, and the poor of Taun
ton were iramediately returned to life and vigor.
" Jf any man has doubts concerning the effect of large taxes on foreign
manufactures, he should tum his eyes to the Eastern States. The me
chanic is generally the first who perceives of a pernicious commerce ;
for the support of his family depends on his daily labor." " Hence it
is that the merchant may be profited by a particular branch of commerce,
and may promote it diligently, while his country is sinking into a deadly
consumption." Sir, these opinions had spread, stiU earlier, still farther
south. Let rae recall to your recollection a few passages from
the book of the wisdora of South Carolina. Here is an essay,
in two letters, written in Charleston, in that State, in I786,
by some one whose enlarged and wise nationality of spirit
and aims is indicated by his signature, — " American." The
position which he asserts is, that the " only method, consistent
with humanity, by which nations have raised themselves to
opulence and power, is the encouraging agriculture, manufac
tures, and commerce." In proof of this, he glances at the
history of Egypt, " which to tilling the land soon joined the
mechanic arts," and whose "pyramids and sepulchres, fine
linens and purples, attested the degi'ee to which she advanced
them ; " of Tyre, which " enriched herself by her manufac
tures and coraraerce ; " of Carthage, " which carried with her
VOL. II. 18

206 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
the mechanic arts and the spirit of commerce ; " of Venice,
the greatest entrepot in the world, " which iraported the raw
materials of other nations, manufactured them, and exported
thera to an immense araount ; " of Spain, which " expelled her
raanufacturers and merchants from the kingdom, — a loss that
she has not recovered to this day, and perhaps will not for
centuries to come," — a loss which all the mines of America
have not compensated ; for " with them went the spirit of man
ufacturing and commerce, which always gives vigor to agricul
ture " — Spain, " which, possessing one of the finest climates
and soils of Europe, must reraain poor, till manufactures and
coraraerce can convince the haughty Spaniard that they alone
are the only true permanent source of wealth ; " England,
which, " in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, made but a small
figure in the political or raercantile scale of Europe, which
exported chiefly in foreign bottoms her wheat, which is now
consuraed by her manufacturers, a little lead, tin, and wool, to
Flanders, and, in return received foreign manufactures ; "
Scotland, " a century ago almost as poor as the satire of
Churchill painted it, but which had increased in wealth with a
rapidity nriver exceeded, and by these means : manufacturers
were invited thither, — these, with the great number of sailors,
and victualling their ships, raised the price of provisions, and
gave life to agriculture, — land rose in value, — the barren
heaths were manured and tilled, — rents rose, — the tenants
grew rich, — the nurabers increased, — their cities were im
proved, — their large villages became cities, — and new towns
were built in places that, till lately, seemed to defy human art
to iraprove thera. This is," he adds, " the effect, and always
win be, of manufactures and coraraerce in every country."
" It is in vain," he concludes, " for any people to attempt to
be rich or have a sufficient circulating specie araong them,
whose imports exceed their exports ; the hand of the manufac
turer in a distant land seeras to act upon gold and silver as the
loadstone does upon the needle."
Coraraenting on the fact that England once raised annually
a revenue of three millions and a half by monopolizing our
trade, he says, —
" A great part of this may be saved to these States by our becoming
our own merchants and carriers ; and a great part of the remaining sum

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 207
may be saved in a few years hy encouraging our own manufacturers ; and
even this encourageraent will be of service to our revenues. I mean,
laying a duty on our imports, and giving a small part in bounties to our
own tradesmen."
" I do not wish our planters to turn from planting to manufacturing ; I
only wish to encourage European tradesmen to corae to reside here. I
wish to see as much as possible exported and as little iraported. The
planters that buy the manufactures of America stop so much money in
this country, which must return again to the planters' hands as long as
traders eat."
Of such as this is the whole political literature of that day.
There breathes throughout it all a profound and earnest con
viction that, without a government which can, and which will,
develop and guard the labor of Araerica by protective tariffs
and other kindred instruraentality, independence was not yet
achieved ; the hopes of liberty were a delusive dreara ; a
harren sceptre only had been grasped, unfruitful of joy, un
fruitful of glory.
Sir, the congress of 1789 raight have known, by another
and shorter process, the public sentiraent of that day, — the
public sentiraent of the age of the Constitution. There were
members who had witnessed and united in some one of the
processions and assemblies which, in so many towns and vil
lages, had just been celebrating the institution of the new gov
ernment ; and they might have learned there what the people
expected of them ! Very striking exhibitions they were. Sir ;
and altogether worthy of the contemplation of him who would
truly and adequately know for what the Constitution was
created. On an appointed day, raen carae in from the country,
and, mingling themselves with those of the town, were ar
ranged in order by thousands. Beneath bright skies, — the
moral and national prospect how much brighter than the nat
ural! — with banners and rausic, gazed on, sympathized with
by wives and mothers and daughters and sisters, thronging
at windows, in balconies, and up to the house-tops, the long
and serried files, not of war, but of peace, the long and ser
ried files of labor, moved from street to street, and at length
composed themselves to unite in thanksgiving to God, and
in hstening to discourses comraeraorative of the event, and
embodying the gratitude and the expectations with which the
new government was welcomed in, — embodying a survey of its

208 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
powers and objects, and a sketch of the transcendent good of
which it was full, for that age, and for all time. Sir, in the
banners of various device which marked the long course of
those processions ; in the mottoes upon their flags ; in the
machines, and models and figures, with which the pacific and
raore than triuraphal march was enriched and enlivened; in
the order of its arrangeraents ; in the organizations of trades-
raen and artisans, and all the families of labor which swelled
it; in the conversation of individuals of those "grave and anx
ious multitudes " one with another ; in the topics and thoughts
of the orators of the day; in the applause of the audience;
in all this vast, vivid, and various accumulation and exhibition
of the general mind, alraost as well as in the journals of the
convention, the " Madison Papers," the debates of public bod
ies or the grave discussions of " The Federalist" itself you may
read — the congress of 1789 might read — what kind of govern
ment the people thought they had constructed. I could almost
say that the Constitution is what the general belief of that age
held it to be ; and in these great and solemn festal scenes is
the expression of that general belief.
Take the Philadelphia procession for an instance, of the
fourth of July, 1788, and see what the readers of "Poor Rich
ard's Almanac," the pupils and contemporaries of Franklin,
expected of the federal Constitution. It was a column of
many thousands of persons, of all trades and callings. The
raore advanced figures and devices of the procession were in
tended to represent, in a chronological series, the great events
which preceded the adoption of the new government. There
was one on horseback, representing Independence, and bearing
the staff and cap of liberty ; next followed one, riding upon a
horse, forraerly of Count Rocharabeau, and carrying a flag
with devices of lilies and stars, commemorative of the French
alliance, to which we owed so much ; then another, with a
staff' surmounted with laurel and olive, announcing the treaty
of peace ; after him, another, bearing aloft the name of Wash
ington ; then a herald, proclaiming with sound of trumpet the
NEW ERA ; then a representation of the convention which framed
the Constitution ; and then others, of the Constitution itself;
"a lofty ornamental car, in the form of an eagle;" and a
grand federal edifice, the dorae supported by thirteen columns,

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 209
and surraounted by a " figure of plenty." After these, carae
an appropriate and golden train, the long line of the various
labor of Araerica, for whora the new era had risen, with heal
ing in its wings. First, as it ought to have been, was the
agricultural society. Then carae the manufacturing society,
with spinning and carding machines ; looms and apparatus for
the printing of muslins and calicoes. This bore three flags.
The device on one was a bee-hive, with bees issuing frora it,
standing in the bearas of a rising sun ; the field of the flag
blue, and the motto, " in its rays we shall feel new vigor."
The motto on the next was, " may the Union governraent pro
tect the manufactures of America ; " and, on the next, " raay
government protect us." On the carriage of the manufac
turers, drawn by ten horses, were a carding machine, worked
by two persons " carding cotton ; " a spinning raachine,
worked by a woraan, and drawing cotton suitable for fine
jeans ; looms on which laces and jeans were being woven ; a
man designing and cutting prints for shawls ; and " Mrs.
Hewson and her four daughters," in cotton dresses of their
own manufacture, pencilling a piece of chintz of Mr. Hew-
son's printing. There followed then great numbers ; I believe
there may have been more than fifty bodies of tradesmen and
mechanics, each with its banner, devices, and motto, expressive
of the sarae hopes and the sarae convictions, evidencing.equally
the universal popular raind. But I need pursue the raatter no
further. Sir, what was seen in this procession was seen, on a
larger or sraaller scale, everywhere. The pageant is passed.
The actors have retired frora huraan view. The awful cur
tain has dropped on thera forever. All the world's a stage,
and this part is played ! Yet the spirit of philosophical his
tory — that spirit to which the half obliterated figures of a pro
cession upon a wasting architectural fragraent reveal intelli
gibly and instructively sorae glory or some sorrow of a past
age — will not disdain to gather up and ponder these manifesta
tions of the hopes, desires, and purposes, of that mighty heart
now hushed. I do not wish or expect to understand the ob
jects for which the Constitution was framed better than the
generation which raade it ; and of their understanding of thera
I have referred you to very vivid and very authentic proofs.
I cannot forbear to read you a sentence or two, before I take
18*

210 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
leave of the subject, from " Observations on the Philadelphia
Procession," written by an eye-witness, very soon after the
celebration : —
" The large stage on which the carding and spinning machines dis
played the manufacture of cotton was viewed with astomshment and de
light by every spectator. On that stage were carried the emblems of the
future wealth and independence of our country. Cotton may be culti
vated in the Southern and manufactured in the Eastern and Middle
States, in such quantities, in a few years, as to clothe every citizen ofthe
United States. Hence will arise a bond of Union io the States, more
powerful than any article of the new Constitution. Cotton possesses several
advantages over wool as an article of dress and commerce. It is not
liable to be moth-eaten, and is proper both for winter and summer gar
ments. It may, moreover, be manufactured in America at a less expense
than it can be imported frora any nation in Europe. From these circum
stances, I cannot help hoping that we shall soon see cotton not only the
uniform of the citizens of America, but an article of exportation to foreign
countries. Several respectable gentleraen exhibited a prelude of these
events by appearing in complete suits of jeans, manufactured by the
machines that have been mentioned."
Compare this with the judgment of Mr. Calhoun, in his
speech in the house of representatives, April, 1816 : —
" Capital employed in manufacturing is calculated to bind together
more closely our widely spread Republic. It will greatly increase our
mutual dependence and intercourse."
I leave, then, the first period of our policy. The law of
1789 was a protective tariff, in principle, intention, and effect.
It was made so in execution of the universal will of the age
of the Constitution. In the "good old days," protection,
whether " principal " or " incident," was held indispensable,
and was made sufficient.
And now we are prepared to compare or to contrast with
this' the second systera, — the existing systera, — that which
began in 1816, and was raatured in 1824 and 1828. Sir, it
is exactly the system of 1789, accommodated to the altered cir
cumstances of the nation and the world. The statesmen of the
last period followed in the very footsteps of their fathers. It
is not enough to say their objects were as honest ahd as use
ful, their spirit and aims as high, their principles as sound.
They were the same, — just the s&me, — mutatis mutandis.
The law of 1789 was framed to protect the existing manufac-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 211
turing and raechanical industry of the country. So was that
of 1816 and 1824. The tiraes corapeUed a change of details,
and details were changed. Principles, policy, were unchanged.
I cannot discern the hand of "millionary capitalists," or "trad
ing politicians " in the framing of the later, raore than in that
of the earlier system. I see it in neither. Sir, I defend the
lawgivers of 1816 and 1824, first, by the example of their
fathers, and then by every consideration of enlightened patri
otism which may influence American statesraen.
The congress of 1789 found many manufacturing and me
chanical arts starting to life, and soliciting to be protected.
The congress of 1816, and that of 1824, found families and
groups and classes of manufacturing and mechanical arts, far
more nuraerous, far raore valuable, far raore sensitive also,
and with more urgent claim, soliciting protection. In the in
terval between 17^9 and 1816, this whole enterprise had not
only iraraensely enhanced its value, but it had totaUy changed
its nature. It had increased its annual productions to
1120,000,000 in 1810, and to $150,000,000 or perhaps
|200,000,000 in 1816. But its nature had becorae different.
Instead of a few plain, hardy, coarse, simple, household em
ployments, it had become a various, refined, sensitive industry,
— demanding associated capital, skiU, long and highly trained,
costly and improving machinery, — more precious, but present
ing a far broader mark to the slings and arrows of fortune, to
hostility, to change, to the hotter foreign competitions which
its growth was sure to provoke. Now, you all praise the
husbandry of 1789, which so carefully guarded the few blades,
just tiraidly peeping forth into the rain and sunshine, of that
April day, hardly worth the treading down ; will you depre
ciate the husbandry of 1824, which with the sarae solicitude,
but at the expense of a higher wall, guarded the grain, then
half-grown, and evincing what the harvest was to be ?
The statesraen of 1816 and 1824 then might justify them
selves by the example of the age of Washington and the Con
stitution. But I desire to make their defence upon considera
tions even higher and broader.
In the first place. Sir, their legislation may not only be
justified, but it is entitled to praise, honor, and imitation, on
the ground of the transcendent value of raanufacturing and

212 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
mechanical industry to a people. Do not fear that I am about
to inflict upon you a comraonplace upon this topic. I do not
understand that there are two diffiirent opinions upon it in the
civUized world. Certainly there are not two here. Senators
who will not Uft a finger to introduce or to foster such indus
try ; who think that neither this governraent nor the State
governments have any power to do so, by the only means that
are worth a straw, protective duties — this government having
none because the Constitution does not give it, and the State
governments having none because the Constitution takes it
from thera to bestow it on nobody — senators who think that,
power or no power, you ought to do nothing directly, openly,
and avowedly, to exert it — all vie with one another in glow
ing and lofty estiraates of the uses and value of this industry
to our nation — to any nation. Doubtless, Sir, to the higher
forras of a coraplete civilization, a various, extensively developed,
intellectual manufacturing and mechanical industry, aiming to
multiply the comforts and supply the wants of tbe great body
of tbe people, is wholly indispensable. Its propitious influence
upon the wages and enjoyments of labor ; the reasonable rewards
which it holds out by means of joint stock, in shares, to all capital,
whether the one hundred dollars of the widow and orphan, or
the one hundred thousand of their wealthier neighbor; its pro
pitious influence upon all the other employments of society;
upon agriculture, by relieving it of over-production and over-
competition, and securing it a market at home, without shut
ting up its raarket abroad; upon coraraerce, creating or raainly
sustaining its best branch, doraestic trade, and giving to its
foreign trade variety, flexibility, an enlargeraent of field, and
the raeans of coraraanding a needful supply of the productions
of other nations, without exhausting drains on our own ; its
influence upon the comforts of the poor, upon refinement, upon
security, defence, independence, power, nationality — aU this is
conceded by everybody. Senators denounce the means, but
they glorify the end. Protective duties make a bill of abomi
nations ; but an advanced and diversified mechanical industry
is excellent. The harvest is delightful to behold ; it is the
sowing and fencing only that offend the constitutionalist who
denies the power, and the economist who denies the expe
diency, of reaping anything but spontaneous growths of un-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 213
tUled soils. While, therefore, a general defence of this class
of eraployraents, and this species of industry would be wholly
out of place, there is, however, an illustration or two of their
uses, not quite so coraraonly adverted to, on which I pause to
say a word. And one of them is this: that, in connection
with the other tasks of an advanced civilization, with which
they are always found associated, they offer to every faculty
and talent and taste, in the community, the specific work best
suited to it ; and thus eff'ect a more universal development and
a more complete education of the general intellect than other
wise would be practicable. It is not raerely that they keep
everybody busy, in the evening and before light as well as in
the daytirae, in winter as well as in suraraer, in wet weather
as well as in fair, woraen and children as well as men, but it
is that everybody is enabled to be busy on the precise thing
the best adapted to his capacity and his inclinations. In a
country of few occupations, eraployraents go down by an ar
bitrary, hereditary, coercive designation, without regard to
peculiarities of individual character. The son of a priest is a
priest; the son of a barber is a barber; a raan raises onions
and garlic, because a certain other person did so when the
Pyramids were building, centuries ago. But a diversified,
advanced, and refined raechanical and raanufacturing industry,
cooperating with these other numerous employments of civi
lization which always surround it, offers the widest choice,
detects the slightest shade of individuality, quickens into exist
ence and trains to perfection the largest conceivable amount
and the utmost possible variety of national mind. It goes
abroad with its handraaid labors, not like the elegiac poet into
the church-yard, but among the bright tribes of living child
hood and raanhood, and finds there in raore than a figurative
sense, sorae mute, inglorious Milton, to whom it gives a tongue
and the opportunity of fame; the dauntless breast of some
Hampden still at play, yet born to strive with the tyrant of
raore than a village ; infant hands that may one day sway the
rod of empire ; hearts already pregnant with celestial fire ;
future Arkwrights and Watts and Whitneys and Fultons,
whom it leads forth to a discipline and a career that may work
a revolution in the arts and commerce of the world. Here are
five sons in a family. In some communities they would all

214 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
become hedgers and ditchers ; in others, shore fishermen ; in
others, hired men in fields, or porters or servants in noble
men's families. But see what the diversified employments of
civUization may make of them. One has a passion for con
tention and danger and adventure. There are the gigantic
garae of the sea; the vast fields of the Pacific; the pursuit even
" beneath the frozen serpent of the South," for him. Another
has a taste for trade : he plays already at bargains and barter.
There are Wall Street and Milk Street, and clerkships and
agencies at ManUla and Canton and Rio Janeiro, for him.
A third early and seriously inclines to the quiet life, the fixed
habits, the hereditary opinions and old ways of his fathers ;
there is the plough for him. Another develops from infancy
extraordinary mechanical and inventive talent ; extraordinary
in degree, of not yet ascertained direction. You see it in his
first tvhittling. IChere raay be a Fulton, or an Arkwright ;
there may be w'rapped up the germs of an idea which, realized,
shall change the industry of nations, and give a new name to
a new era. Well, there are the machine-shops at Lowell and
Providence for him ; there are cotton raills and woollen mills
for him to superintend; there is stationary and locomotive
steam-power for him to guide and study ; of a hundred de
partments and forras of useful art, sorae one will surely reach
and feed the ruling intellectual passion. In the flashing eye,
beneath the pale and bearaing brow of that other one, you de
tect the solitary first thoughts of genius. There are the sea
shore of storra or calm, the waning raoon, the stripes of sum
mer evening cloud, traditions, and all the food of the soul, for
him. And so all the boys are provided for. Every fragment
of raind is gathered up. Nothing is lost. The hazel rod,
with unfailing potency, points out, separates, and gives to sight
every grain of gold in the water and in the sand. Every taste,
every faculty, every peculiarity of raental power, finds its
task, does it, and is made the better for it.
Let me say, Sir, that there is another influence of raanufac
turing and mechanical arts and industry, which should com
mend them to the favor of Araerican statesraen. In all ages
and in all nations they have been the parents and handmaids of
popular liberty. If I had said of democratical liberty, I should
have expressed myself more accurately. This praise, if not

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 215
theirs alone, or preeminently, they share perhaps with cora
raerce only. I observe, with surprise, that Mr. Calhoun, in
his speech in opposition to Mr. Randolph's raotion to strike
out the mininura valuation on cotton goods, in the house of
representatives, AprU, 1816, a speech in raany respects re
markable and instructive, and to which I shall make frequent
reference before I have done — in that speech Mr. Calhoun
gives some slight countenance to the suggestion that " capital
employed in manufacturing produced a greater dependence on
the part of the employed, than in commerce, navigation, or
agriculture." Sir, I think this is contradicted by the history
of the whole world. " Millionary manufacturing capitalists,"
like all other persons possessed of large accumulations, are
essentially conservative, timorous, disinclined to change, on the
side of law, order, and permanence. So are millionary com
raercial capitalists, and raillionary cotton-growing and sugar-
growing capitalists, and raiUionary capitalists of all sorts. But
the artisans of towns — raechanics, manufacturing operatives,
that whole city and village population, wherever concentrated,
by whora the useful arts of a civilized society are perforifted
— are among the freest ofthe free, the world over. They are
no raan's slaves ; they are " no man's men." Brought together
in considerable nurabers, and forming part of a still larger
urban population in immediate contact ; reciprocaUy acting on,
and acted on by, nuraerous other rainds ; enjoying every day
some time of leisure, and driven by the craving for stimulus
which the monotony of their eraployraents, their own raental
activity, and all the influences about them, are so well calculated
to produce — driven to the search of some external objects of
interest, they find these in conversation, in discussion, in read
ing newspapers and books, iu all the topics which agitate the
crowded coraraunity of which they are part ; and thus they be
come curious, flexible, quick, progressive. Something too in
their position and relations, — just starting in the world, their
fortunes to seek or to raake ; something in their half antagonis-
tical, half auxUiary connection with their employers, — free asso
ciated labor employed by large associated capital ; something,
with unfailing certainty, determines them to the side of the
largest liberty. So always it has been. So it was in the freest
of the Greek republics. So too, in the Middle Age, after her

216 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
sleep of a thousand years from the battle of Pharsalia, liberty
revived and respired araong the handicraftsmen and traders' of
the small commercial and manufacturing towns of Germany,
Italy, and England. There, in sight of the open and glorious
sea, law, order, self-government, popular liberty, art, taste, and
all the fair variety of cultivated things, sprung up together, and
set out together on that " radiant round," never to cease but
with the close of tirae. And where do you feel the pulses of
democratical England and Scotland beat quickest and hottest
to-day 1 What are the comraunities that called loudest for
parliaraentary reform ; and call loudest now for those social
and political ameliorations, the fear of which perplexes the
throne, the church, and the aristocracy"? Certainly, the large
and small manufacturing towns. " The two great powers," I
read from the ablest Tory journal in Great Britain, "operating
on human aff'airs, which are producing this progressive increase
of democratical influence, are the extension of manufactures
and the influence of the daily press." What British periodical
is it, which most zealously advocates the cause, asserts the
dignity, appreciates the uses and claims, of manufacturing in
dustry 1 Precisely the raost radical and revolutionary of them
all. And whose rhyraes are those which convey to the strong,
sad heart of English labor " thoughts that wake to perish
never," the germs of a culture growing up to everlasting life,
the "public and private sense of a man ; " the dreara, the hope,
of social reforra ; and a better, but not revolutionary liberty ?
Whose, but EUiot's, the worker in iron, the " artisan poet of
the poor " 1
The real truth is. Sir, that raanufacturing and mechanical,
and commercial industry, is " the prolific source of democratic
feeling." Of the two great eleraents, which must be combined
in all greatness of national character and national destiny, —
permanence and progression, — these employments stimulate
the latter ; agriculture contributes to the forraer. They are one
of those acting and counteracting, opposing yet not discordant
powers, from whose reciprocal struggle is drawn out the har
mony of the universe. Agriculture is the other. The country
is the home of rest. The town is the theatre of change. Sen
ators are very fond of reminding us that the census shows so
large a preponderance of numbers at work on the land. Then,

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 217
Sir, over and above all the good you do them, by calling off
sorae who would crowd that employment into other business,
and providing a better market for those who remain in it, why
should you be afraid, on a larger and deeper reason, to temper
and attend this by other occupation ? You have provided well
for permanence. Be not afraid of the agents of intelligent
progress. It is the union of social labors which causes the
wealth, develops the mind, prolongs the career, and elevates
and adorns the history of nations.
But, Mr. President, there was another consideration, which
might well have weight to induce the statesmen of 1816 and
1824 to protect the raanufacturing and mechanical arts of their
country. It was not merely that they were useful, but that they
were a thing actually existing, not requiring to be made out
of the whole cloth, if I may borrow a figure from the subject,
but only requiring to be saved, preserved, sheltered. It is one
thing to force these arts by main strength, by a violent policy,
right out of the ground, out of the mine, out of the waterfall ;
and quite another, after they have so started, after capital has
taken that direction, after the evil is done and the good is begin
ning, after skUl is acquired, raachinery accumulated, investments
made, habits formed — after all this, not to let thera die. The
first may be unwise ; the other cannot be. The statesraen of
1816 and 1824 were not required to choose between the theory
of Adara Sraith, and the practice of England. They were not
required to choose between Scotch and French philosophy, and
that immemorial, steady, daring, and perhaps happy disregard
of such philosophy, which has domesticated and naturalized the
whole circle of civilized arts on that narrow and stormy isle ;
which has raised on it the throne of the sea ; which has given
it the wealth that (poured out on the banks of the Neva, of the
Danube, and of the TagusJ raay have disappointed the dream
of a universal French monarchy. They had no such choice to
make. Not at all. There were the arts in existence — non
sine diis animosi infantes! before thera. It no more followed,
because they raight not have forced thera into being, that they
were to let thera perish, than it follows, because you advise a
young friend not to raarry till he is older, that you raean, if he
disregards your counsel, to have hira kill his infant child. In
such a case, new and precious eleraents raingle in the delibera-
VOL. II. 19

218 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tion. The existence of interests, spontaneously, undesignedly
arisen, raay turn the scale. And so Mr. Calhoun, in the
speech frora which I have once read, reasoned. He said, —
" Besides, we have already surmounted the greatest difficulty that has
ever been found in undertakings of this kind. The cotton and woollen
manufactures are not to be introduced, — they are already introduced to a
great extent ; freeing us entirely from the hazards, and, in a great meas
ure, the sacrifices experienced in giving the capital of the country a new
direction. The restrictive measures and the war, though not intended for
that purpose, have, by the necessary operation of things, turned a large
amount of capital to this new branch of industry."
"A good patriot and true politician," says Burke, "always
considers how he shall make the raost of the existing raaterials
of his country." Sir, we are forced to hear it sometiraes said,
in these tariff" discussions, that the precepts of philosophy, the
dictates of coramon sense, and the teachings of experience,
appear to come in conflict. I do not know how that is ; but
this I will say, that if in all that political econoray has reasoned
or dograatized or drearaed, in any one page of any one book
on the subject, of high authority, or of little authority, there
can be found one solitary sentence which asserts, that in the
actual circurastances of this country in 1816, 1824, and 1842
— after manufacturing industry had advanced to the state in
which then it existed, after so much capital was invested, and
skill learned — that it was, at these periods, wise and expedi
ent to have given to that industry less than an adequate protec
tion, and to have suffered it to die, or asserts any principle
which fairly applies to and governs such a case, then I will
confess that the dictates of common sense and the revelations
of experience are a far better guide than such raadness and
foolishness of science. I have heard no such proposition read,
now or formerly.
In this attempt, Mr. President, to show that the statesmen
of 1816 and 1824, the framers ofthe "second systera," acted
not under the influence of " raillionary capitalists," not in the
spirit of " ambitious politicians," for " sectional enrichment and
political advancement," but upon grounds and considerations
worthy of them, and which should even recommend the sys
tera itself, I must not forget one influence which I doubt not
had its effect. Sir, between the year 1807 and the year 1816,

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 219
the national character, or at least the national spirit, tone, tem
per, underwent a great change. A more intense nationality
was developed. Everybody felt taller, stronger, raore wholly
American, prouder of America than he did in I8O7. Every
body felt that we had passed through one epoch and stage of
our history, and were corae to another. We felt that we were
emerging frora the class of sraall States, to the class of large
States. We had just gone through a war with honor ; we
had contended not ingloriously with the first power in the
world ; we had recovered our long lost self-respect. The long
wrongs of England for a quarter of a century had been
avenged. Our flag floated again, all unstained as on the day
when freedom " Tore the azure robe of night.
And set the stars of glory there."
Yes, Sir, everybody felt that that age — never to be re
membered without a tear for America — the age of gun
boats and torpedoes ; of proclamations and philanthropy, falsely
so called ; when we were knocked down one day by a Berlin
or Milan decree, and the next by an order in council ; when
we retired from all the seas, and hid ourselves under embar
goes and acts of non-intercourse — everybody felt that that
age was gone forever. The baptism of blood and fire was on
our brow, and its influence was on our spirit and our legisla
tion. Sir, I believe it was under the influence of this change
of national feeling that the public raen of 1816, scarcely con
scious of it, perhaps, turned with the instinct of a true and
happy civil discretion to a policy which was appropriate to the
altered teraper, the prouder spirit, the raore national senti
ments, the new age of their country. They turned to find in
her various cliraate, diversified soil, exhaustless mines, ample
water-power, in her frugality and industry, the materials of
that self-derived and durable greatness to which they now felt
that she was destined. They turned to make her independent
in reality as in name. Foul sharae they deeraed it, that the
American soldier at least should not sleep under an American
blanket; that the very halyards by which we send up the stars
and stripes in the hour of naval battle should be made in a
Russian ropewalk ; that an American frigate should ride at
anchor by a British chain cable !

220 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
These, Mr. President, I believe, I hope, these, and such
as these, and not the influence of avarice or of«personal am
bition, were among the sentiments and convictions which
produced and which justify our legislation of 1816 and
1824. Wise statesraen, true patriots, admonished by the
bitter experience of the war, kindling with the sentiments and
carrying out the policy of a new era of our history, not " raill
ionary capitalists " or " trading politicians," were its authors.
I claira for it as noble an origin as for the elder system. With
what degree of truth and justice I have done so, it is for you
to judge. The tariffs, then, of 1816 and 1824, were framed on the
same interpretation of the Constitution, and the same doctrines
of political economy, as was the tariff of 1789- You need not
ascend frora the later to the earlier, to find a better spirit,
worthier objects, or sounder policy. The statesraen of 1824
did just what the statesraen of 1789 would have done in the
sarae age, by the sarae lights, on the same facts. Why, then,
I shall be asked, were the duties of 1824 so rauch higher than
those of 1789 ? Sir, I pause to answer the question, because,
in doing so, I raake an arguraent, valeat tantum, for the duties
of 1842. They were so rauch higher, because the duties of
1789, sufficient for revenue and protection then, were totally
insufficient for either in the altered circumstances of 1824,
and would be totally insufficient for either now.
Consider, in the first place, that the manufacturing and
mechanical arts and industry of the country, as they existed
and were to be provided for in 1816, had not grown up to
the state in which Congress found them, under the influence
of the protecting duties of 1789- They were, on the con
trary, the stiraulated and joint product of certain artificial and
temporary causes of great energy, to wit : the commercial em
barrassments which preceded the war, and, the war itself
Upon this subject I think I have reraarked two erroneous
views : one attributes too rauch influence to the war, and sup
poses that manufacturing eraployraents had not made much
progress before the war ; the other correctly appreciates their
very prosperous condition as early as 1810, but ascribes it to
inadequate causes, — to spontaneous growth, to the natural
progress and developments of things, or to the gentle influence

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 221
of the moderate protection of the legislation of 1789- Both
are erroneous. That in 1810 manufacturing industry had
been very far advanced is certahi. It was then that Mr. Gal
latin, while Secretary of the Treasury, surveyed and analyzed
it, and arrived at the conclusion that its annual product ex
ceeded one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. He
says, —
" From this imperfect sketch of American manufactures it may, with
certainty, be inferred that their annual product exceeds one hundred and
twenty millions of dollars. And it is not improbable that the raw mate
rials used, and the provisions and other articles consumed by the man
ufacturers, create a home market for agricultural products not very
inferior to that which arises from foreign demand — a result more favor
able than might have been expected from a view of the natural causes
which impede the introduction and retard the progress of manufactures in
the United States." — Mr. Gallatin's report, April 17, 1810.
But what had caused this ? Certainly not the duties of
1789; certainly not those duties cooperating with the natural
and spontaneous course and progression and changes of na
tional industry. I do not know that the honorable Senator
from Missouri intended to express the opinion that these were
the cause of the manufacturing prosperity of 1810. But in
the effort to show, what is certainly true, that the war did not
produce it, he, unintentionally, doubtless, leaves the implication
that it was a purely spontaneous growth under the duties of
the " old system." Thus he says, " I must again advert to
the date. The modern champions of manufactures say it was
the war which gave birth to raanufactures ; and that we raust
have high duties now, to protect what the war created. But
the work of Mr. Coxe shows this to be a grand raistake ; that
this great interest had taken deep and wide root before the
war, and was going on well even before the year 1810." This
is certainly true ; but the honorable Senator oraits to advert to
those other causes which before the war had exerted an influ
ence sirailar and almost equal to war itself. Sir, the exact
historical fact is this. Down to the year 1807, the progress
of American manufactures was very slow. Our capital was
richly rewarded upon the sea, and upon the sea it remained.
In I8O7, two new and most powerfuUy stimulating influences
supervened, by which a sudden, new, and vast irapulse was
19*

222 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
communicated to these employments, and which really pro
duced that splendid result which, in 1810, attracted the notice
and justified the admiration of Mr. Gallatin. These causes
were, first, the violations of our rights of neutrality by the
great beUigerents, England and France; and, second, our own
coraraercial restrictions. These causes had the double opera
tion of driving our capital frora the sea, to seek other invest
ments, and of keeping foreign fabrics out. The instantaneous
effect of the two, in conjunction, was, that manufacturing in
dustry started at once, in a hundred new or enlarged forras, to
life, and grew, I will not say with a rank and unhealthy, but
with a stiraulated and hastened luxuriance, down to the war,
and through the war. I suppose that nine tenths, perhaps
raore, of all that Mr. GaUatin surveyed and analyzed and
admired, in 1810, had sprung up within the three years
before. The proofs of this are familiar and decisive. Look first at
the dates of certain not very agreeable events. The Berlin
decree was made in Noveraber, 1806 ; the first order in coun
cil, January, 1807; the MUan decree in Noveraber, I8O7.
The erabargo was laid in Deceraber, 1807; i* continued till
March, I8O9, when it was succeeded by the act of non-inter
course, which continued until the war. Here, therefore, were
three years — more than three years — during which one of
the causes to which I have adverted was in operation, and
more than two years during which they both were so, before
Mr. Gallatin raade his report. Well, Sir, mark the results.
In 1789 there was not a cotton spindle in the United States.
In 1805 and 1806 there were only 5,000; in 1810, there
were 80,000 ! an increase of sixteen-fold in four or five years.
I gather these facts, in part, from Mr. Gallatin's report itself,
and in part from an instructive report upon the subject of cot
ton, submitted to congress by the Senator frora New Harap
shire, [Mr. Woodbury,] when Secretary of the Treasury. But
let rae refer you to the proof a little raore largely. I read first
a few passages frora Mr. Gallatin's report : —
" The first cotton-mill was erected in the State of Rhode Island in the
year 1791 ; another in the same State in the year 1795 ; and two more
in the State of Massachusetts in 1803 and 1804. During the three suc
ceeding years, ten more were erected, or commenced, in Rhode Island,

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 223
and one in Connecticut — making, altogether, fifteen mills erected before
the year 1808, working at that time about eight thousand spindles, and
producing about three hundred thousand pounds of yarn a year.
" Returns have been rteceived of eighty-seven mills which were erected
at the end of the year 1809, sixty-two of which (forty-eight water and
fourteen horse mills) were in operation, and worked at that time thirty-
one thousand spindles. The other twenty-five will all be in operation in
the course of this year, and, together with the former ones, (almost all of
which are increasing their machinery,) will, by the estimate received,
work more than eighty thousand spindles at the commencement of the
year 1811.
" The increase of carding and spinning of cotton by machinery in
establishments for that purpose, and exclusively of that done in private
families, has, therefore been fourfold, during the last two years, and will
have been tenfold in three years.
" But by far the greater part of the goods made of those raaterials
(cotton, flax, and wool) are manufactured in private families, mostly for
their own use, and partly for sale. They consist principally of coarse
cloth, flannel, cotton stuffs and stripes of every description, linen and
mixtures of wool with flax or cotton. The information received from
every State, and from more than sixty different places, concurs in estab
lishing the fact of an extraordinary increase during the last two
TEAKS, and rendering it probable that about two thirds of the clothing,
including hosiery, and of the house and table Knen worn and used by
the inhabitants of the United States who do not reside in cities, |s the
product of family manufactures.
" The demand of last year was double of that of 1808, and is still
rapidly increasing.
" The annual importations of foreign hemp amounted to 6,200 tons.
But the interruption of commerce has greatly promoted the cultivation of
that article in Massachusetts, New York, Kentucky, and several other
places ; and it is believed that a sufficient quantity will, in a short time,
be produced in the United States. The injurious violations ofthe neutral
commerce of the United States, by forcing industry and capital into other
channels, have broken inveterate habits, and given a general impulse, to
which must be ascribed the great increase of manufactures during the last
two years."
So far Mr. Gallatin.
But listen to the not less weighty evidence of Mr. Jefferson,
in his message of 1808 : —
" The suspension of foreign commerce produced by the injustice of the
beUigerent Powers, and the consequent losses and sacrifices of our citizens,
are subjects of just concern. The situation into which we have thus heen forced
has impeUed us to apply a portion of our industry and capital to intemal
manufactures and improvements. The extent of this conversion is daily
increasing, and little doubt remains that the establishments formed and
forming will, under tjie auspices of cheaper materials and subsistence, the

224 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
freedom of labor from taxation with us, and of protecting duties and pro
hibitions, becorae permanent."
And of Mr. Madison, in his message of 1810 : —
"I feel particular satisfaction in remarking that an interior view of our
country presents us with grateful proofs of its substantial and increasing
prosperity. To a thriving agriculture, and the improvements relating to
it, is added a highly interesting extension of useful manufactures, the
combined product of professional occupations and of household industry.
Such, indeed, is the experience of economy, as well as of policy, in these
substitutes for supplies heretofore obtained by foreign commerce, that in
a national view the change is justly regarded as, of itself, more than a
recompense for those privations and losses resulting from foreign injustice,
which furnished the general impulse required for its accomplishment.
How far it may be expedient to guard the infancy of this improvement
in the distribution of labor, hy regulations of the commercial tariff, is a
subject which cannot fail to suggest itself to your patriotic reflections."
And in his message of 1811 : —
" Although other subjects will press more immediately on your de
liberations, a portion of them cannot but be well bestowed on the just and
sound policy of securing to our manufactures the success they have at
tained, and are still attaining, under the impulses of causes not permanent,
and to our navigation the fair extent of which is at present abridged by
the unequal regulations of foreign govemments. Besides the reasonable
ness of saving our manufactures from sacrifices which a change of cir
cumstances might bring upon them, the national interest requires that,
with respect to such articles, at least, as belong to our defence and pri
mary wants, we should not be left in a state of unnecessary dependence
on external supplies."
Let me call your attention to a selection from the report of
Mr. Dallas, when Secretary of the Treasury, in 1816 : ' —
" It was emphatically during the period of the restrictive system and
the war that the importance of domestic manufactures became conspicu
ous to the nation, and made a lasting impression on the mind of every
statesman and every patriot. From 1783 to 1808, the march of domestic
manufactures was slow but steady. It has since been bold, rapid, and
firm." Mr. Newton, of Virginia, chairraan of the committee on
commerce and raanufactures, in a liberal and able report, in
February, 1816, expressed the sarae opinion : —
"Prior to 1806 and 1807, establishments for manufactures of cotton
s had not been attempted, but in a few instances, and on a limited scale.
Their rise and progress are attributable to embarrassments to which com
merce was subjected."

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 225
The impulse thus given was continued and increased by the
war; and thus the manufactures of 1816 were, as I have
said, the joint and stimulated product of that event, of the
interruptions of coraraerce which for five years preceded it,
and of what I raay call the national progress and changes of
national industry.
Now, Sir, for the protection of manufactures thus called
into existence, and which, instead of the plain, hardy, coarse,
and household eraployraents of 1789, had grown a refined,
complicated, and sensitive industry, the duties of 1789 had
becorae totaUy inadequate in 1816. It cannot be too often
repeated nor too literally understood, that then a new age had
opened on the world. With the battle of Waterloo one era
ended, and another begun. The thunders of that day of doora
— what were they but the great beU of tirae sounding out
another hour ? Then arose a new age on the exhausted na
tions ; an age to which " no monarch shall affix his narae ; the
age of industry ; the age of coraforts to the poor ; the age of
the people." Iraraediately they all turned to the developraent
and culture of their own resources ; to the contests of peace,
more glorious than the contests of war. England, in a pre
eminent sense and degree, went back, with all her energies, all
her capital, and all her nurabers, frora the Tagus, the Rhine,
the Neva, to contend in Birrainghara and Manchester and
Liverpool for the raarkets of the United States. On that field.
Sir, we were then no match for her. On others, we had won
some laurels ; there we were not yet her raatch. It becarae
indispensable that the governraent should throw its protecting
arm around the labor of the country ; should guard it against
the fierce, new, and hot corapetition which assailed it ; should
shelter it frora the torrent heat and the sudden blasts of the
new world in which it found itself. The duties of 1789 would
have been as unavailing as bow and arrow against the bayonet
and flying artillery of raodern war. Sir, one raost striking
and decisive proof of this is at hand. The tariff' of 1816 was
meant to be a protecting tariff. As such, it was assailed and
defended! Sorae things it did protect. Some effects it did
produce. It put an end to the importation of cotton fabrics
made in the East Indies of East Indian cotton ; and to that
extent it extended the market of the cotton of Araerica. I

226 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
have no doubt that, taking it all together, it was a better tariff
than this bill of the Senator frora South Carolina ; better than
such a bill as the principles indicated by the Senator from
Missouri would construct. But what were its effects ? Manu
factures were prostrated. From an annual product of two
hundred raillions in 1816, they had fallen in 1820 to an annual
product of thirty-six raillions only. This it was which stirau
lated that great effort in 1820 for a raore adequate systera. In
this, as in 1789, Pennsylvania took the lead. She was power
fully seconded by the eloquence and zeal of Mr. Clay ; a bet
ter law passed the house, but failed by one vote in this body.
We lived along, languishing, until 1824, when governraent at
length recognized the existence and the deraands of the new
age of the world. We carae fairly into line, and entered on
that contest of industrial glory with the nations, where the
prizes are unstained by tears or blood; where the victory is
without guilt, aud the triumph without abateraent.
I have spoken, Mr. President, of a new age. I hold here
a curious and striking proof and product of such an age. It
is a paraphlet called " Foreign Tariffs ; their injurious effects
on British manufactures, especially the woollen manufacture ; "
and it is a collection of the protecting regulations of different
governments, adopted since 1815, with "proposed reraedies."
It is corapUed by Mr. Bischoff, a British manufacturer, no
doubt ; but who at all events " raost potently and powerfully
believes " that the world was created solely for the sake of
consuming British manufactures. You could get no other
idea into his head. If he could see the nations, one and aU,
coraing back to British cottons, woollens, iron, and glass, and
all else which raakes up the circle of her arts, he would die
happy. Read the raotto on his title-page. " Encourage those
trades raost that vend most of our raanufactures." He takes
it frora Sir Josiah ChUds's discourses on trade; but it em
bodies the whole sum and substance of the political economy
of England. What effect the consumraation which he so
devoutly wishes might have on the coraforts, the population,
the wealth, the aggrandizement of the consuming and non-
manufacturing nations, he very naturally and very properly
leaves them to consider. That is their business. It is his
" to vend the raanufactures of England." WeU, it is quite

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 227
plain that he feels that his country is a little wronged by
the way the world is going. Hear how pathetically he ejacu
lates : —
" The ink with which the treaties of Vienna were signed was scarce
dry, ere Russia, to which an immense trade used to be carried on in wool
lens, prohibited the importation of all coarse cloth by enormous duties,
excepting, indeed, what was ordered by her own governraent fbr the
clothing of the troops. The King of Sardinia, who had his Italian do
minions restored to him by British valor, and Genoa with its rich territo
ries and fine seaport added to his kingdom, not only deprived us of the
great privileges we formerly enjoyed, but imposed almost prohibitory
duties on the iraportation of British manufactures, not only into his own
dominions, but into those territories which were added to his kingdom.
The Emperor of Austria prohibited the introduction of our woollens and
cottons into his empire, including also his newly acquired Italian States,
Lombardy, the Milanese, Venice, &c., which formerly took large quanti
ties of our goods. And other governments acted in a sirailar manner.
" Such was the policy, and such has continued io he ihe policy of the
continental powers, without apparently a single objection, remonstrance,
or protest, from England, or any effort made to preserve our manufac
tures ; and thus has our trade in the near markets of Europe been
almost destroyed.
" The continental States have, moreover, by adopting the mode of im
posing duties on weight instead of, as formerly, on value, struck an irrep
arable blow, unless that system be altered, at the old staple manufactures
of the country — cloths, coatings, and other woollens of low qualities,
which consume British wool, making a pound weight of the coarsest
fabrics pay the same amount of duty as a pound of the very best super
fine cloth. That system is as injurious to the wool grower as it is to the
manufacturer. " With scarce a single exception, all States have had in view what has
been deemed protection or stiraulus to their own fabrics. This has been
the policy of France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Prussia, Denmark, Swe
den, Russia, Austria, Sardinia, Naples, and even the United States of
America. Whether the course so adopted be wise or not — whether the
term shackles would not be more properly applied to the system than
^protection' — whether it be just or not, to tax the many for the sup
posed advantage of the few, is not now the question : they had the ex
ample of England, which appears to have been the rule upon which they
have acted."
In all Europe, Holland is perhaps the single country which
has not adopted such a policy. And she. Sir, is not quite the
Holland she was in the times of Charles the Second, when the
thunders of her cannon " startled that efferainate tyrant in his
own palace, and in the arms of his mistresses ; " not what she
was in 1688, when she gave a deliverer to England; not what

228 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
she was when she was the carrier and banker of all the world.
All but her are taking care of themselves, with the most
total and provoking disregard of all the free-trade preaching
by which England would persuade mankind that the methods
which have raade her rich and great wUl make all other nations
poor and feeble. Turkey improves a little on all, " letting
everything cortie freely into her dominions, but letting nothing
go out ; " borrowing her pohcy, it might seem, frora her own
Mediterranean, into which there ever runs an unreturning
flood. A distinguished friend not long since remarked to me, that
the character and topics of the British parliaraentary debates,
corapared with those of a half century ago, very strikingly indi
cated the existence of that new world which statesraen have to
act in. I have thought I could remark the same thing. What
could such a leader as the elder Pitt do with such a house of
coraraons and such subjects of debate ? What would the ex
aggerated eloquence of the great war minister find to say about
" onion seed " ? Sir Robert Peel speaks as well on that im
portant article as he does on Ireland. " The glory of a great
rainister in the last century was, that he made this country
flourish still more by war than by peace. The glory of the
present era is, that things have returned to their natural course;
and that peace is become, as it ever ought to be, a greater
restorer of national force than war."
Yes, Sir, the times have changed. That is the wisest na
tion which the most adequately comprehends the degree, the
permanence, the nature of the change, and first places itself at
the head of the great industrial revolution. It is the praise of
the statesmen of 1816 and 1824, that they understood and
acted upon this truth. It was because they did, that they at
once held fast by the principles and deserted the details of the
legislation of 1789- If you would restore the dress and the
cradle of infancy, you raust bring back again its tiny limbs,
and its stature of a span long. If the statesmen of the age of
Washington were alive to-day, they would not revive the
duties of their tirae, unless you could give back again from
the dim dominion of the past the world of their time.
Another consideration urged by the honorable Senator from
Missouri, for returning to the good old legislation, for aban-

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 229
doning protective duties, and substituting duties which I think
are not protective, was this, — that certain statistical tables
which he produced reveal sorae very unfavorable practical
results of the present system, as contrasted with the results of
the former system. And I agree at once, that if the clear and
unequivocal teachings of a sufficient experience pronounce
against the existing policy, it is to be abandoned. But do
these tables make out such a case ?
I find, Sir, that I shall not have occasion to detain you
upon them as long as I at first designed to do, because I think
that one general observation applies to and disposes of the
matter. Ifthe premises are true, the conclusions do not ap
pear to follow. If the tables are true, and the whole truth,
they prove nothing against the policy of protection. If every
figure in every column is right, still the great question of the
effect of that policy on agriculture, commerce, and revenue,
which has been so instructively debated, is left just where it
was before. No new argument is afforded against the views
which the Senators from Maine, Connecticut, Verraont, Rhode
Island, Georgia, and my colleague, have taken ; and no addi
tional force or illustration is given to the views of the Senators
from South Carolina and New Hampshire. The tables either
do not show what the working of the existing system has beeh,
or they show nothing which has not been asserted and conceded
before. Suppose, for example, in the first place, that the tables indi
cate that the receipts from customs were raore regular before
1808 than since 1816; that they went on advancing with a
more regular progression, with less of fluctuation from large
in one year to small in the next, and the reverse ; how can
you possibly refer this to the low duties of one period, or the
high duties of the other 1 I can very well understand that
sudden and great changes from one rate to another, too raany
of which have disfignred and disturbed the latter period, will
cause fluctuations in all things, in imports, exports, business,
hopes, fears, plans, everything. It is for that very reason that
I deprecate the proposed great change. But that a fixed, set
tled policy of high duties, known, promulgated to the world,
promulgated to the foreign manufacturer and shipper, such a
system as that of England, for instance, should cause raore
VOL. II. 20

230 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
fluctuations in the receipts from customs, than a policy of low
duties no better known and no more firmly fixed — this I
have not organs to comprehend. Sir, you must show some
connection between high duties as such and the fluctuations
you complain of. You must not say post hoc ergo propter hoc.
This would be to attribute the rise of cotton to icebergs or
meteors, if I may employ an illustration of the Senator from
South Carolina. I think it is Addison's country gentleman
who insisted upon it there had been no good weather in Eng
land since the revolution of 1688. I cannot speak for the
weather ; but, good or bad, nobody but the Tory fox-hunter
himself threw the blarae on the going out of the Stuarts. Sir,
no doubt there are far more causes of irregularity in our im
ports and in our receipts from customs, wholly disconnected
with the absence or presence of a protective poHcy, now, than
when we were poorer, fewer, traded less, and had a raarket
for which foreign producers less desperately contended. If
you go back to good old colonial tiraes, to 1650 and I67O, I
dare say you raight find still less irregularity in these partic
ulars. Probably, too, the Indians of the North-west have
received their annual supplies of gunpowder, blankets, and the
like, from the British colonial government, with a regularity
still more severely and beautifully guarded. A thousand
causes of this kind of fiuctuations there must be, with which
the rates of duties have no raore to do than the icebergs with
the price of cotton, or the revolution with the bad weather.
In a country whose nurabers have been growing from ten mill
ions to seventeen millions ; with a coraraerce extending as far
as winds blow and waters roll ; a coraraerce which trades in
everything, with everybody ; a country partly supplying its
home market, and partly carrying its own productions in its
own ships, and yet contending for that market and that navi
gation with numerous and greedy foreign corapetitors; passing
through raore than one great convulsion which has shaken the
whole world of trade ; agitated by the currents and winds of
its own seasons of local speculation ; its currency soraetimes
disordered ; its policy too often changing ; all things, business,
values, wages, the soleran temples of its Constitutions them
selves rising and faUing on the waters of opinion which know
no rest — in such a country I shaU neither be surprised nor

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 231
scared to see, under whatever rates of duty, a great deal of
irregularity in iraports and in revenue frora iraports. Whether
it be an evU or not, and to whatever extent it be one, I see no
connection between it and a known, settled, promulgated, weU
and widely understood policy of protection.
Perhaps I raight not entirely concur with the distinguished
Senator frora Missouri, in his estiraate of the raagnitude of the
evU. An evil, it no doubt is. Sometimes, in sorae circura
stances, irregularity would be an intolerable one. In the case
he puts, of a balloon in the air, now " bursting with distention,
now coUapsing frora depletion," it would be greatly inconven
ient. But all greatness is irregular. All irregularity is not
defect, is not ruin. Take a different illustration frora that of
the balloon. Take the New England cliraate in suramer —
you would think the world was coraing to an end. Certain
recent heresies on that subject raay have had a natural origin
there. Cold to-day, hot to-morrow ; mercury at 80° in the
morning, with wind at south-west ; and in three hours raore, a
sea turn, wind at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the
ocean, and a fall of 40 degrees of Fahrenheit ; now so dry as
to kill all the beans in New Hampshire, then floods carrying
off the bridges and dams of the Penobscot and Connecticut ;
snow in Portsmouth in July, and the next day a man and a
yoke of oxen killed by lightning in Rhode Island — you would
think the world was twenty times coming to an end ! But I
don't know how it is ; we go along ; the early and the latter
rain falls each in his season ; seed-time and harvest do not
fail ; the sixty days of hot corn weather are pretty sure to be
measured out to us ; the Indian suraraer, with its bland south
west and raitigated sunshine brings all up; and on the twenty-
fifth of Noveraber, or thereabouts, being Thursday, three
mUlions of grateful people, in meeting-houses, or around the
famUy board, give thanks for. a year of health, plenty, and
happiness. All irregularity, whatever the cause, is not defect,
nor ruin.
Suppose, in the next place, that these tables show a dirain
ished consumption of foreign imports, since 1816, in propor
tion to our numbers, compared with the consumption before
1807? The protective policy is not the cause. This is my
first answer. And the evil is over-balanced by the good.

232 .SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
This is ray next answer. You may consume less of foreign
fabrics, in proportion to your nurabers, than before 1808, for
the reason that the decline of agricultural prices, the dirain
ished agricultural exportation, the loss of the profits and
freights of the golden age of commerce and navigation, raay
really have raade you less able than before to exchange your
labor for foreign labor. Is the policy of protection to blame
for this? Is it not, on the other hand, its office, its aim, to
counteract this very evil which it does not produce, by enabling
you to exchange that labor for domestic fabrics, which you
cannot pass for foreign fabrics ? You raay consurae less of
sorae imported fabrics than before, for the reason, that while
your general ability is greater, your demand is supplied by the
domestic raanufacturer. And is there anything very dreadful
in this 1 Suppose that, by this means, that useful foreign com
merce which binds the nations together may not grow quite in
proportion to our increasing numbers ; or rather, that its out
ward and homeward cargoes somewhat change their nature ;
still enough of it is left, enough for philanthropy, for civiliza
tion, for national wealth, for diversified social employment,
while that far more useful domestic coraraerce which binds
together associated States, and kindred hearts and tribes, has
expanded till it carries a value of a thousand miUions of dol
lars in a year.
Suppose, finaUy, the honorable Senator's tables announce a
diminished export of agricultural productions since the year
1816, — diminished since the tirae when Europe forgot agri
culture, to pursue war, — how is the tariff of protection respon
sible for this ] Does anybody believe that we should sell one
pound or one peck the more, if we iraported frora England the
very shoes which we put upon our horses' feetl No, Sir; you
sell all which the necessities of foreigners oblige them to buy
at remunerating prices; so you would, tariff' or no tariff'; and
you would do no more. Sir, to hold our protective legislation
responsible for this falling off' of these exports, is to hold it
responsible for the very evils whose existence compelled you to
resort to it, in order to break their force ; evils which, but for
this, you could not bear at all. You lay the fault, not on the
ferocious assaUant, but on the defensive armor, and the raanly
resistance, without which the attack would have been fatal.

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 233
Yes, Sir, it is far nearer the truth to say this : that it was
because foreign tariffs, discriminating for colonial agriculture
and against yours; the increased agricultural production of
Europe ; the great bulk of that class of commodities compared
with the value — it was because these and other causes had
deprived your farmers of their foreign raarket, that your
statesmen turned to find them one at home, and have already
to an encouraging extent succeeded ; it was because the wings
of our ancient golden foreign commerce had been clipped,
that they turned to find a substitute in doraestic coraraerce ; it
was because the old world had unexpectedly developed new
and extraordinary resources and powers and productiveness,
that they sought, in another sense than Mr. Canning used the
lofty boast, " to restore the balance," by bringing a new world
into existence in the new world. This is far nearer the truth
than to describe the protective policy as the author of the evUs
which it seeks to raitigate.
I have done, then, Sir, with the arguraent drawn frora the
tables. As I said, I do not think they affect at all the great
question which we have had so long and ably discussed, of
the operation of protective duties on coraraerce, agriculture, and
revenue. They leave that where they find it. I do not raean
to repeat a word of that discussion. Neither these tables, nor
any quantity of tables, nor any araount of reasoning, nor any
public opinion of one region, or of all regions of the country,
nor all the polemical political econoray of raanufacturing Eng
land, will bring rae to doubt that I do good service to agricul
ture by lessening the nurabers that pursue it, and giving thera
a nearer and better raarket ; that even the foreign trade of a
nation, which manufactures as weU as tills the earth, will be
richer, wider, steadier, better prepared to spread its sails to
every breeze, than the foreign trade of a nation which only
tills the earth; and, finally, that domestic commerce araong
such States as ours is better than an exclusive foreign cora
raerce. These truths, at last, are above all cavU. I will not
confess that they require vindication, by atterapting to vin
dicate them.
It has been urged. Sir, as another consideration to induce
or to reconcUe us to a return to the old system, that manufac
turing and mechanical industry is in a highly prosperous gen-
20*

234 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
eral condition. Its products are said to be vast. Its profits
are said to be great.
I admit, undoubtedly, that an immense amount of capital is
invested in it. I adrait that it eraploys and feeds raUlions —
men, warnen, and chUdren — of our own household. I admit
that it has spread over the whole country ; that it is insepar
ably intertwined with the labor and the prosperity of the
whole ; that it benefits all ; that it harms none. I admit
that, with the general business of the nation, it is just now
prosperous. But what then 1 Does the Senator frora Missouri say, that
because these eraployraents are so nuraerous, so widespread, so
interwoven with all the nerves of business, and so flourishing,
that therefore he would destroy or lessen or impoverish them ?
The direct reverse. He desires to see them prosper. He is
willing to leave them raore protection than they need. So I
understood his speech ; and so I understood hira to say in reply
to ray friend from Rhode Island, [Mr. Simmons,] whom he
supposed to have suspected him of unfriendliness to protection.
I mean to treat, then, this arguraent frora the prosperous condi
tion of this industry, as the arguraent of a friend of adequate
protection, who wiU raaintain the existing degree and mode of
protection, if it is necessary ; who would, however, be desirous
to reduce that degree, and depart frora that mode, if manufac
turing eraployraents can bear the reduction and the change, and
who infers frora their present prosperity that they can bear it.
To hira, then. Sir, who, being a friend of sufficient protec
tion, and of a diffused, multiform, advanced manufacturing and
mechanical industry, tells us, that a reduction of one half or
one third of the existing protection will leave enough, I answer
by asking, how do you know this ? How do you raake me,
how do you make the senate, know it ? How do you prove
it ? Where is your evidence ? I respect your opinions highly.
But I raust see the grounds of this opinion.
The burden is on you. The presumption in the first in
stance is, that the existing rates of duty cause, and are neces
sary to, the existing prosperity. Prima fronte \t IS so. Here
is the apparent cause. There is the apparent effect. Here is
the law of 1842. Side by side, conteraporaneous, coexistent,
is the acknowledged prosperity. Here are the fruits : figs and

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 235
grapes ; they seem to grow, not on that thorn, or that thistle,
but on the kindred tree and vine.
Well, this presumption is heightened by looking back a
little. Duties ran down, in 1841, into the neighborhood of
those which you say wiU give araple protection now. Manu
facturing labor ran down too, and pari passu. You raised the
duties, by the present law, to their present height. These
employments sprung up, too, with an instantaneous and mar
veUous sympathy. The revival followed so close upon the
passage of the law of 1842, it followed so naturally, it was so
exactly what was predicted, so exactly what was expected, it
was so entirely conformable to all our experience and to all
analogy, that we can hardly in the first instance resist the con
viction that the law was cause, the revivak effect.
Then, I repeat it, the burden is heavy on you, who say that
half or any other proportion of the duties of 1 842 will give
adequate protection, to prove it. This law of 1842 is no new
law ; it has no new, inflamed, untried rates of protection in it.
It is for substance the law of 1S28 — the law of 1824. It
has been twenty years in maturing. It has been constructed
with great care ; with much labor and much thought ; by the
aid of much investigation and rauch evidence. The system
which it embodies has been long and thoroughly tried. You
have tried it as in 1 825, 1 829, 1 843, by keeping it in force ;
and you have tried it as in 1820 and 1841, by suffering it to
fall. If now you say it is a great blunder, and that it lays
duties in any proportion larger than its own objects require,
you must prove it.
Well, what are the proofs ? Have you any evidence of ex
perienced persons, collected by a coraraittee ? Have any wit
nesses been examined, any opinions taken, any parliaraentary
inquisition holden 1 Nothing at all of the sort.
You say, manufactures flourished on the low duties of 1789
and I8O7. Why, we might as well be told that antedUuviatis
lived a thousand years. Where is the period from 1789 to
1807? With the days beyond the flood. Why reason from
the experience of a world, which neither you nor I shall ever
see again ? Why not consult the experience of the actual
world for which you legislate? You tried low duties in 1816,
since the present age began, and you failed. You tried thera

236 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
in 1841, and you failed again. Is not this experience, decisive
and stern, to dispel the delusive dreams, whispered by the ir
revocable and inapplicable past ? To go back to the protection
of 1789, for the prosperity of 1789, is to go back in old age
to the place of our birth, to seek for the singing-birds of child
hood which now sing no raore.
You say some branches of raanufactures are earning enor
mous profits. Well, what then ? What does the bill of the
Senator frora South Carolina thereupon propose ? What do
the principles of the Senator frora Missouri provide for such a
case ? Do you institute an investigation into the appalling
phenomenon, to ascertain whether the fact is so; how long it
has been so ; what are the teraporary and accidental causes ;
whether the laws of business hydrostatics are not already
bringing such profits down to the general level of all employ
ments ? Not at all. Do you proceed to reduce the duties on
these unreasonably prosperous branches ? No such thing. You
seize the scythe, and just swing it at large over the whole field
of labor, prosperous or unprosperous. Worse than Procrus
tes, who only pared down the too tall one, you, because one
man is longer than the standard, cut the whole regiraent in
two in the raiddle. Cottons thrive, say ^e free-trade news
papers, — and down go the duties on hats! Fustians are lively,
— and off coraes the shoeraaker's protection ! Great stories
are credibly and anonymously told of large salaries at Lowell ;
dividends which they are afraid to divide ; and calico printing
which is making all their fortunes ; whereupon, in our zeal, we
propose to take off about one third, more or less, of the duties
on ready-made clothing ! I do not understand the logic of the
operation. Here is a building, some seven or ten stories high,
with a thousand tenants. You propose to put your hands on
the top of it, and press it down, bodily, into the ground about
one half way. I humbly suggest the question, whether it is
altogether safe for the persons in it ? Perfectly so, say you,
perfectly so ; why do these people want to live seven, eight,
ten stories in the air ? Well, for them it may be safe, but
what becomes of those who inhabit the basement and the
ground rooms ? They wUl be stifled to death !
Sir, let me respectfully recommend cautious and delicate
handling of these interests. Vast, various, prosperous, as they

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 237
are, a breath can unmake thera, as a breath has raade. This bill
strikes a blow, the extent, degree, and nature of whose injurious
effect no raan can foresee or lirait or cure. That which you
certainly raean to do, involves consequences which you certainly
do not raean. You begin by saying profits are too high. Then
you propose to reduce profits. You begin by saying more for
eign raanufactures raust be iraported, because you propose to
increase revenue by reducing duties. This deraands, of course,
enlarged importations. To that extent, to a new and undefined
extent, you displace, disturb, diminish the doraestic raarket of
your own manufacturers. But can you really strike down the
general profits and break up the actual raarket of Araerican
labor, and yet leave it prosperous, rewarded, and contented ?
I intended. Sir, to have said soraething on the fallacy of the
argument, that when manufactures are so firmly established
as to have reduced prices, and raade them reasonable, stable,
and proportional to other prices, that then you may abolish
protecting duties. But this topic has been so well handled by
others, and particularly by my colleague, and I have already
detained you so long, that I forbear. Let me read a single
passage from the sarae speech of Mr. Calhoun, to which I
have referred so much : —
" But it will no doubt be said, if they are so far established, and if the
situation of the country is so favorable to their growth, where is the ne
cessity of affording them protection ? It is to put them beyond the reach
of contingency." I may say, however, in a more general way, that, in the
universal judgment ofthe world, stabUity, steadiness, the lapse
of considerable periods of time, years, years of adequate protec
tion, are required to build up raanufacturing and raechanical
arts to a consuramated and durable prosperity. The policy of
caprice will not do it; the policy of high duties to-day and
low ones to-morrow ; of inflation and collapse, jumping back
fifty years, to rock grown raen in the cradles of infants — this
never will do it. Let me call to your notice a few extracts
from the " Monthly Review," London, March, 1844, which
convey, I think, a certain and iraportant truth : —
"It is to be hoped free trade sophistry will not go so far as to exclaim :
England having once brought her manufactures — no matter by what
means — to the utraost degree of perfection, free trade can only prove

238 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
her advantage, since foreign competition in her market is out of question
in most articles, while her own will be brought to foreign markets free of
duty. "They (the continental statesmen) well know that, as soon as the
system of free trade is adopted, all idea must be abandoned of ever estab
lishing manufactories in the present agricultural countries, even for home
consumption alone. ; since it lies in the nature of a manufacturing country
to have at coraraand a mass of knowledge, expertness, practice, imple
ments, and machinery, wholesome public institutions and regulations, vast
connections and wealth, in all of which agricultural countries are deficient,
as they can only be acquired slowly and gradually, through an uninter
rupted series of ages, and the possession of which is manifest in the com
parative cheapness of the manufactures. It is the principle of stability,
continuation, and perseverance, that constitutes the basis of all the great
works and institutions realized by the hands of men.
" The history of dynasties, nations, countries, and towns, as well as of
the arts and sciences, corroborate the power of that principle. The latter
(arts and sciences) have arrived at their present state of development, as
the former did at power, riches, and authority, only through the exertions
of a series of generations, striving and working to one and the same end,
the succeeding generation always taking up the thread where the preced
ing had left off. By this principle alone was it possible to erect monu
ments, the stupendousness of which we now admire, even in their decay.
To bring their principle more home, inquire of every master mechanic or
manufacturer, and he will tell you to how many difficulties and expenses
the outset of a contrivance is subject, and how comparatively easy and
profitable the more advanced progress is. In looking more attentively
into the history of the useful arts, and the various departments of indus
try, which are now brought to so flourishing a condition, we find that one
branch has sprung out of the other, and that the success of one depended
on that of the others ; iu short, that they all mutually influence each
other, and that the elements hostile to the principle of stability and
continuation — such as civil disturbances, critical periods in trade, and
fiuctuations in prices — have destroyed in a very short time the labor of
ages." Germany is atterapting, as we are, to develop her industrial
capacities, and is annoyed, as we are, by the selfish and sense
less prattle of free trade. I like the good sense and the firm
ness with which a writer in the " Augsburg Journal " reraarks
on the honeyed and gilded plausibUities of Dr. Bowring : —
" Dr. Bowring deceives hiraself very rauch, if it be his belief that Ger
many desires no better fortune than to be allowed exportation of her corn
and wood to England, receiving in return English manufactures. Some
few landholders on the Lower Elbe, and some few possessors of forests
on the Baltic, raay cherish the same hopes, and have expressed the same
wishes, as the Doctor.
" Manufactures are plants of slow growth ; and in a few years is easily
destroyed that which took ages to build. Now or never is the time to found

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABX)R. 239
durably German industrial independence and the greatness of Germany.
To this end, it is before all things necessary that the Germans themselves
should feel full confidence in the solidity of German industry.
" The more Germany advances on the path of industry which she has
adopted, the more decidedly appears the necessity of a determined and
changeless duty system, having for its aim the regular advancement of
German industry."
Let me say, Mr. President, that it would seera to rae no
matter of rejoicing or pride to see the absolutism of the Euro
pean continent attracting and retaining about its steadfast
thrones these useful and manly arts, denied to us, yet so rauch
raore appropriately and more naturally forming the ornament,
strength, and enrichment of popular liberty. Other arts I
could give those governraents up. I could resign, without a
sigh, all the beauty and all the grace that live on canvas.
^They may have the breathing and speaking marble, for me.
I could give thera up all the poetry and all the rausic that ever
consoled a nation for the loss of freedora. But I cannot so far
divest myself of the prejudices, if they are such, instUled bythe
study of the history of the Constitution and of its earlier ad
ministration ; I cannot so far forget the counsels of so raany
presidents and great raen, the living and the dead ; I cannot
so far overlook the raighty causes of the wealth and power of
nations, as not to feel a profound anxiety that these nobler and
manlier arts, these arts which, as Washington thought, guard
our independence, insure our security, and clothe and feed our
masses ; these arts, whose only regulator, whose only patron,
whose only reward, is the wants of the people — that these
arts should be all our own. Whether they shall be or not,
depends on the stability and energy of our policy. It depends
on you. It depends on the deliberations of this day.
You see, then, Mr. President, that I concur with the distin
guished Senator from Missouri in the importance of stability
and of harmony, — harmony in the country; stability in the law.
They are worth something. They are worth a great deal. But,
Sir, without an adequate protection to these forms of labor,
you can have no harmony and no stability ; and they would
not be worth having, if you could. Our seasons of inadequate
protection have not been seasons of harmony, because they
have not been seasons of prosperity. Such was the period
frora 1783 to 1789. Such that from 1816 to 1824. Bad

240 -SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
legislation ; bad systeras ; systems inadequate to the demands,
the hopes, the glory, of a free, busy, and aspiring people, will
not be stable. They ought not to be. They will not be so
till the pulses of liberty are dead, and the cold, bitter, unfruit
ful, and calm sea of despotism shall cover us over. Stable
protecting legislation, not an unprotecting stability, and not a
fluctuating protection, is the one grand desideratum for Ameri
can harmony and prosperity.
I have done. Sir, with the discussion of the general subject,
and will soon resume my seat. The honorable Senator from
Missouri thinks that the present is an unpropitious moment for
the adjustment of the tariff'; referring, as I understand him,
to the approaching presidential election. The Senator from
Georgia [Mr. Berrien] concurs in this opinion. I go further,
Sir, than either, and for reasons somewhat different. I should
be quite willing, for my part, if for the six raonths preceding
such an election, such a subject as this should be tabooed
ground. It should be interdicted. The tirne should be dies
non juridicus — the tirae of sturap speaking, if you please,
not of congressional legislation. I distrust ray own ability to
corae with the requisite care and calmness to such a deliber
ation. I distrust myself; almost I distrust you. We are
within a few months of an election which is to determine who is
to wield the vast executive powers of this government for the
next four years ; who are to administer the executive depart
raents ; who to represent you at all the courts of the world,
who to fill all the national offices ; what will, what spirit, what
dispositions, are to preside in the administration, for all good
or evil which administration can accompUsh. We are sur
rounded by many raillions of people, whose hearts are throb
bing, as the heart of one raan, vnth anxiety for the result.
Among these all, are we sure that we are quite cool ourselves?
Are we sure that we are quite in a condition to adjust this vast
system, to settle these infinite and delicate detaUs? Is there
no danger that disturbing elements raay enter into the deliber
ation ? Is there no danger that we shall be thinking how this
rate of duty or how that raay affect votes, instead of inquiring
exclusively how it wUl affect labor, prices, revenue ? Do you
think the master of a stearaboat is quite so good a judge how
much his boilers will bear whUe he is running a race with a
new rival on a ten thousand dollar wager ?

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 241
I declare. Sir, that it has raore than once crossed ray raind,
barely crossed it, that this circurastance of our legislating
under the pernicious heat of this dog-star may help to explain
the extraordinary attention that has been paid to Massachusetts
in the debate. It is her profits for which newspapers have
been ransacked. It is her advocacy of the tariff to which
senators have supposed themselves replying. If a sneer could
be insinuated against her opinions about the last war, or, better
still, about abolition, it seeras to have passed for some sort of
argument against a protecting policy. The silence which has
been observed towards Pennsylvania has been quite as reraark
able -as the eloquence which has been expended on Massachu
setts. I deceive myself, if there has been the slightest allusion
to her, or her iron duties, in the whole winter's debate. I
perceive that, in the report of the coraraittee of ways and
means of the house, very affectionate and patriotic things are
even said about iron. Now, Sir, when you consider that
Massachusetts never made a protecting tariff; that she took
no leading or influencive part in 1816; that she opposed that
of 1824 with almost her entire vote, and with great zeal and
abUity; that she voted against that of 1828; that she has
done nothing but just to stay where you placed her ; that
Pennsylvania, on the other hand, has been the founder, the
steadfast support and stay of the whole system ; that she raade
the protecting parts of the act of 1789 ; that in 1816, 1820,
1824, 1828, always, always her numerous vote, and her
powerful and cultivated talents, have been prorainent and con
troUing in raaintaining and giving energy and corapleteness to
the policy ; and when you consider, too, what are the interests
which it protects for her — considering all this, is it strange
that the question has passed through my mind, whether the
extraordinary notice of Massachusetts, and the extraordinary
reserve towards Pennsylvania, raay not possibly be attributable
to her having a large electoral vote which is thought to be
somewhat doubtful; while ours is a sraall one, not at all
doubtful ? Whatever the cause, the fact is certain. I amused
myself the other evening with imagining what sort of history
of the tariff a writer two thousand years hence might make
up, from raaterials derived exclusively from one side of this
debate. The Senator frora New Harapshire once wrote a very
VOL. n. 21

242 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
good discourse on the uncertainties c^ history; he will not
wonder, therefore, to find this sketch pretty full of blunders.
It might run nearly thus: "In the year 1824, the State of
Massachusetts somewhat abruptly ejaculated. Go to, now ! let
us raake a protecting tariff. And thereupon that State, hav
ing, as it would appear, by some means not clearly explained,
acquired a large raajority of votes in both houses of congress,
did actually proceed to force such a thing down the throats of
the other astounded and reluctant States. What renders this
the raore remarkable is, that the Constitution evidently contem
plated no such thing, that celebrated compact having been a
mere great free-trade league, entered into mainly with a view
to promoting the culture of a certain beautiful vegetable wool,
called cotton. However, she raade a tariff. And thencefor
ward the doraestic history of the States seems to have consisted
very rauch of a series of the raost desperate and raost chival
rous struggles, on the part of all the others, to get rid of a
system which at once debauched their understandings and
picked their pockets. In this contest, though all did well.
South Carolina and New Harapshire particularly distinguished
theraselves ; one being the great cotton-growing, and the other
the great navigating State of the Union. Well might they
take the lead ; they were most ably represented, (there the
historian is right;) and it appears to have been an indisputable
and melancholy fact, that the tariff' had killed all the cotton in
the fields of South Carolina, and had rotted down the ten
thousand raasts of the merchant navy of New Hampshire,
piecemeal, — so that in 1842 the whole nuraber of human
beings who sailed frora her ports, in her vessels, were only
fifty-six men and three boys ! " Here the manuscript termi
nates ; and it is about as true as the first five books of Livy,
nine tenths of Plutarch, and a considerable part of Hume's
history of the Puritans and the Stuarts !
Certainly, Sir, we are very rauch in these employments.
You may thank yourselves for that. And is it not an excel
lent thing for you that we are ? Are we not a very much
more useful meraber of the partnership, more useful to the
other partners, than we could be without ? Is it not a good,
honest, genial, social, " hve and let live " sort of business you
have driven us into ? Suppose, Sir, you could drive us out of

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 243
it again, as you raay ; suppose you should send us back to ice
and granite, to sawing boards, raising beans and corn, drying
nets and raaking fish on the rocks of our iron-bound and stern
coast, or to roaming the ocean for freights, in competition with
the black-bread sailors of Bremen and Hamburg ; suppose that
thus you could drive three quarters of our people away, to
return no raore, — what good would it do you ? Now, if we
had a Chinese wall around Massachusetts ; if our work was
done two thousand feet under ground ; if it was the digging
of gold or quicksilver, to be sent abroad in our vessels or for
eign vessels ; if all that you saw of us was when, once a year,
we came here with the soot of the furnace on our faces, to beg
for bounties and prohibitory duties, — why, that would be one
thing. But is it nothing that we take and consume within
that single State an annual amount of raore than forty millions
of doUars of your productions ; an amount out of all manner
of proportion to any other State, except Rhode Island ; an
amount equal to about one half of the whole exports of the
whole Union, exclusive of manufactures ? Is it nothing
that we take these productions, not only frora all 'the great
regions. East, Central, South, and West, but from every
State something, — cotton, grain, rice, sugar frora the South,
and South-west ; naval stores from North Carolina ; grain and
meats from the Central regions ; lead and corn from Missouri ;
buffalo robes from the Rocky Mountains? I hold here the
enumeration of these productions, in an excellent speech of
Mr. Hudson, of Massachusetts, delivered at the session of
1842, in the other house, to which senators raay have access.
— See Note, p. 245.] And is this nothing ? Is it not a
truly national business which we pursue ; national in the sur
face it spreads over ; national in the good it does ; national
in the affections it generates ? Well said Mr. Calhoun, in
1816,— "It produces an interest strictly American, as much so as agriculture,
in which it had the decided advantage of commerce or navigation. The
country will from this derive much advantage. Again : it is calculated
to bind together more closely our widely spread Republic. It will greatly
increase our mutual dependence and intercourse ; and will, as a neces
sary consequence, excite an increased attention to internal improvements
— a subject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attain
ment of national strength and the perfection of our political institutions."

24-4 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Yes, Sir, raanufacturers and mechanics are Unionists by
profession ; Unionists by necessity ; Unionists always. Learn
to know your friends. The time may come you wUl need
them !
I have been pained inexpressibly. Sir, by some things which
have been insinuated, not very distinctly said, in this debate.
In a discussion of the tariff', I have heard allusions to the
course of Massachusetts in 1812, and to the abolition senti
ments which she cherishes to-day. How am I to understand
thera ? Does any one dare to propose, or dare to intimate,
that speculative opinions on one subject are to be punished by
unkind, deleterious, practical legislation on other subjects ?
For our opinions on the last war, or on the institution of
slavery, do you propose to drive our artisans and mechanics
from their living's and their homes ? God forbid. Do not
think of such a thing. Banish it. Disdain it. Despise it.
Despise, I am sure you do, a retaliation so absurd, so mean,
so unjust, so profligate. Permit me to say, that you must
take tl^p States of Araerica as you find thera. All of them
have their peculiarities. All have their traits. All have their
history ; traditions ; characters. They had them before they
came into the Union. They will have thera after
 " Rome in Tiber melts, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire falls."
South Carolina has hers — Massachusetts has hers. She
wUl continue to think, speak, print, just what she pleases, on
every subject that raay interest the patriot, the moralist, the
Christian. But she wUl be true to the Constitution. She sat
among the most affectionate at its cradle ; she will follow, the
saddest of the procession of sorrow, its hearse ! She some
tiraes has stood for twenty years together in opposition to the
general governraent. She cannot promise the implicit politics
of some of her neighbors. I trust, however, that she will not
be found in opposition to the next administration. I have
heard that once her senate refused to vote thanks for a victory
for which her people had shed their blood. Sir, you must take
the States as you find thera ! You raust take her as you find
her ! Be just to her, and she will be a blessing to you. She
wiU sell to you at fair prices, and on liberal credits ; she wUl
buy of you when England and Canada and the West Indies

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 245
and Ireland wiU not ; she wUl buy your staples, and raould
them into shapes of beauty and use, and send them abroad, to
represent your taste and your genius in the great fairs of
civUization. Something thus she may do, to set upon your
brow that crown of industrial glory, to which "the laurels that
a Csesar reaps are weeds." More, Sir, raore. Although she
loves not war, nor any of its works ; although her interests,
her morals, her intelligence, are all against it ; although she is
with South Carolina, with all the South, on that ground ; yet.
Sir, at the call of honor, at the call of liberty, if I have read
her annals true, she wUl be found standing, where once she
stood, side by side with you, on the darkened and perilous
ridges of battle.
Be just to her, coldly, severely. Constitutionally just, and
she will be a blessing to you.

NOTE TO PAGE 215.

EXTRACT OF A NOTE ON ADAM SMITH'S WEALTH OF NATIONS, BY M'OCLLOOH, VOL. I.
PP. 211, 212, EDIN. EDITION, 1828.
They [manufacturing operatives] are thus driven to seek for recreation in
mental excitement ; and the circumstances uuder which they are placed aiford
them every possible facility for gratifying themselves in this manner. By work
ing together in considerable numbers, they have constant opportunities of dis
cussing every topic of interest or importance. They are thus gradually trained
to habits of thinking and reflection ; their intellects are sharpened by the col-
hsion of conflicting opinions; and a small contribution from each individual
enables them to obtain a large supply of newspapers, and of the cheaper class
of periodical publications. But whatever difference of opinion may exist re
specting the cause, there ean be no doubt of the fact, that the intelligence of the
workmen employed in manufactures and commerce has increased according as
their numbers have increased, and as their employments have been more and
more subdivided. I do not think that there are any good grounds for supposing
that they were ever less intelligent than the agriculturists ; though, whatever
may have been the case a century since, no one will now venture to afiirm that
they are inferior to them in intellectual acquirements, or that they are mere
machines, without sentiment or reason.

NOTE TO PAGE 243.
EXTRACT FROM MR. HUDSON'S SPEECH.

I have taken great pains to ascertain as near as possible the amount of articles
consuraed in Massachusetts annually, which are the growth or product of other
States in the Union. I have written to intelligent gentlemen connected with
21 *

246 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES^ SENATE.
almost every branch of business in my own State, and have consulted all the
statistics which have fallen into my hands ; and I confess that our consumption
is greater than I had supposed. Probably some of the estimates may be too
high, and others I am confident are too low. As a whole, I believe them to be
a fair estimate. In fixing the prices, I have endeavored to take the averaje for
the last three or four years. I speak of these articles as consumed in Massa
chusetts. They are consumed in the sense in which such articles are capable
of consumption. Cotton and wool are consumed, in the sense in which I use
the term, by being converted into cloth ; and the sarae is true of all other ar
ticles which go into our manufactures. The result I will now present for the
consideration ofthe committee.
An Estimate of the Products ofthe Soil, Sfc, of other States consumed or manu
factured annually in Massachusetts.
Cotton  185,000 bales $7,200,000
Flour  620,000 bbls. 4,100,000
Corn and other grain  3,730,000 bush. 2,790,000
Coal  176,000 tons 1,300,000
Wood  188,600 cords 1,300,000
Wool . .  8,000,000 lbs. 3,200,000
Lumber of all kinds  3,690,000
Leather and hides  7,600,000
Beef, pork, hams, and lard  2,800,000
Butter and cheese  1,000,000
Horses, cattle, sheep, and swine  600,000
Potatoes  300,000
Poultry of all kinds  70,000
Pig lead  1,450,000
Furs, buffalo robes, &c  45,000
Rags, junk, &o., for paper  965,000
Lime  82,800 casks 72,000
Pot and pearl ashes  500 tons 58,000
Tobacco  960 hhds. 68,000
Rice  325,000
Tar, pitch, and turpentine  1,200,000
Iron  800,000
Sugar and molasses  47,000
Staves, casks, boxes, &c  360,000
Domestic spirits and beer  100,000
Feathers, hair, and bristles  185,000
Oysters, venison, sand, sweet potatoes, summer fruits, such as
peaches, melons, &c  210,000
Hay, grass-seed, flaxseed, flax, linseed oil, castor oil, beans, bees
wax, tallow, onions, and nuts  175,000
$42,010,000
Here we have the round sum of $42,000,000 of domestic products consumed
in the State of Massachusetts — a State of 737,000 inhabitants — iu a single
year. The importance of such a home market will appear when we consider
that the average of our entire export from the United States for the last ten
years, exclusive of the manufactured articles, amounts to only $82,200,000. So
that the State of Massachusetts consumes annually, of the products of other
States, more than half the amount of our whole foreign export, less the man
ufactured articles ; and the articles thus consumed in my own State are the
product of evea-y State in this Union.

ON PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. 247
Maine supplies lumber, wood, lime, leather, and potatoes ; New Hampshire,
wool, butter, cheese, beef, and pork ; Vermont, wool, iron, beef, pork, butter,
cheese, and potash ; Rhode Island, lime ; Connecticut, iron ; New York, flour,
wool, leather, butter, cheese, and grain ; New Jersey, grain, grass-seed, and
fruit ; Pennsylvania, iron, coal, wool, leather, and potash ; Delaware, grain ;
Maryland, corn, tobacco, and leather ; Virginia, corn, flour, tobacco, and coal ;
North Carolina, tar, pitch, and turpentine ; South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi, cotton and rice ; Louisiana, cotton, sugar, and molasses ; Ar
kansas, cotton, beef, and pork; Tennessee, cotton, wool, tobacco, and corn;
Kentucky, tobacco, wool, flour, and whiskey ; Missouri, lead and corn ; Indiana,
flour, com, wool, beef, and pork ; Illinois, lead, flour, corn, and pork ; Michi
gan, flour ; Ohio, flour, corn, beef, pork, wool, and potash.
This is a specimen of some of the leading articles which the different States
furnish to the Massachusetts market. Besides these, there are other articles,
which are produced by the whole valley of the Mississippi, such as hides, fur,
beans, castor oil, flax-seed, &c.

SPEECH ON THE BILL FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
DELrraitED IN THB SENATE OE THE UNITED STATES, JANUAKY 8, 1845.

I AM sure that, whatever opinion may be at last forraed on
this bill, its principles, or its details, all will concur in express
ing thanks to the Senator frora Ohio, [Mr. Tappan,] for in
troducing it. We shall diff'er more perhaps than could be
wished, or than can be reconciled, about the mode of adrain
istering this noble fund ; but we cannot differ about our duty
to enter at once on sorae raode of administering it. A large
sum of raoney has been given to us, to hold and to apply, in
trust, " for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among
men." We have accepted the trust. " To this application "
— such is the language of our act of the first of July, 1 836 —
" to this application of tbe raoney the faith of the United States
is hereby pledged." The donor is in his grave. There is no
chancellor to compel us to redeem our pledge; and there needs
none. Our own sense of duty to the dead, and the living,
and the unborn who shall live, — our justice, our patriotism,
our policy, common honesty, comraon decorura, urge us, and
are enough to urge us, to go on, without the delay of an hour,'
to appropriate the bounty according to the forra of the gift.
I thank the Senator, therefore, for introducing a bUl with
which, to ray own knowledge, he has taken rauch — and, so
far as I can see or conceive — disinterested pains, and which
affords us an opportunity to discharge a plain duty, perhaps too
long delayed.
I think, too, Sir, that the Senator has, in the first sectiou of

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 249
the bill, declared the true fundamental law according to which
this fund ought to be permanently administered. He lends to
the United States the whole sura of |508,3t8 actually re
ceived out of the English chancery, frora the third of Decera
ber, 1838, when it was received, at an interest of six per cent.
per annum. He leaves the sum of |209,103, which is so
much of the interest as will have accrued on the first day of
July next, to be applied at once to the construction of build
ings, the preparation of grounds, the purchase of books, in
struments, and the like; and then appropriates the interest,
and the interest only, of the original principal sura, for the
perpetual raaintenance of the institution, leaving the principal
itself unimpaired forever. This all, is exactly as it should be.
But when you examine the bill a little further, to discern
what it is exactly which this considerable expenditure of
money is to accomplish, — when you look to see how and how
much it is going " to increase and diff'use knowledge among
men," I am afraid that we shall have reason to be a little less
satisfied. I do not now refer to the constitution of the board
of management, of which, let me say, under sorae iraportant
toodifications, I incline to approve ; although on that I reserve
myself. I speak of what the fund, however managed, is to be
made to do. The bill assumes, as it ought, to apply it, " to
increase and diff'use knowledge among raen." Well, how does
it accoraplish this object '?
It proposes to do so, for substance, by establishing in this
city a school, a"college, for the purpose of instructing its pupils
in the application of certain physical sciences to certain arts of
life. "The plan, if adopted, founds a college in Washington to
teach the scientific principles of certain useful arts. That is
the whole of it. It appoints, on perraanent salaries, a profes
sor of agriculture, horticulture, and rural econoray ; a professor
of natural history ; a professor of chemistry ; a professor of
geology ; a professor of astronomy ; a professor of architec
ture and domestic science ; together with a fluctuating force of
occasional auxiliary lecturers ; and all these professors and
lecturers are enjoined " to have special reference, in all their
Ulustrations and instructions, to the productive and liberal arts
of life, — to improvements in agriculture, manufactures, trades,
and domestic economy." Thus, the professor of chemistry is

250 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
to analyze diff'erent kinds of soUs, and to learn and teach how
to enrich thera ; the professor of natural history is to deal with
noxious or useful animals and insects ; the professor of geol
ogy is to illustrate the working of mines ; the professor of
astronomy is to teach navigation ; the professor of architecture
and domestic science is charged with the theory and practice
of building, lighting, and ventilating all raanner of edifices;
and the professor of agriculture, horticulture, and doraestic
economy is to make experiments to see what exotics will grow
and what will not, all over the United States. And, in pursuance
of the same theory of administration of the fund, it is provided
that not a book is to be purchased for the institution except
" works on science and the arts, especially such as relate to
the ordinary business of life, and to the various mechanical
and other improvements and discoveries which raay be made."
Now, I say, that this creates a college or school — such as
it is — on the basis of a soraewhat narrow utilitarianism — to
be sure, erroneously so called — but a college or academical
institution. Who is to be taught agriculture, architecture,
domestic science, rural economy, and navigation ] Not you,
Mr. President, I suppose ; not congress ; not the governraent ;
not raen at all. Students, pupils, youths, are to be brought
hither, if you can find them ; " rules and regulations," (so
runs the eighth section of the bill,) are to be raade " for the
admission into the various departments of the institution, and
their conduct and deportraent while they reraain therein," and
instruction is to be given them by professors and lecturers.
This, surely, is a school, a college, an academical institute of
education — such as it is — or nothing.
Well, Sir, in reviewing, as I have had occasion to do, the
proceedings of congress upon this subject heretofore, I have
received the irapression that it had becorae quite your settled
judgraent, — settled on the raost decisive reasons, — that no
school, college, or acaderaical establishraent, should be consti
tuted. It seems that, in the session of 1838, a joint com
mittee of the two branches was charged with this deliberation.
The chairman of the committee frora this body was Mr. Rob
bins, and the chairman,' on the appointment of the house, was
Mr. Adaras, — both of them, I may pause to say, persons of
the raost profound and elegant acquisition, — both of them of

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 251
that happy, rare class who "grow old stiU learning." The
two coraraittees differed on this very question, whether a school
or coUege should be established. The opinion of the com
mittee of the house is expressed in the fourth section of the bill
(No. £93, Senate,) which they desired to report, and which is
in these words : ^ —
" Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That no part of the said Smithso
nian fund, principal or interest, shall be applied to any school, college,
university, institute of education, or ecclesiastical establishment."
That of the committee of the senate is distinctly enough inti
mated in the beautiful speech with which Mr. Robbins intro
duced the subject in January, 1839. I find it in the appendix
to the " Congressional Globe : " —
" I could wish, if all were agreed in it, that this institution should
make one of a number of colleges, to constitute a university to be estab
lished here, and to be endowed in a manner worthy of this great nation
and their immense resources. But as opinions are divided upon this sub
ject, — hot, I should hope, as to the great desirableness of such an estab
lishment, but as to the constitutional competency of congress to undertake
it, — I will not embarrass my present object by involving it with that
subject. This, as an independent institution, may hereafter be made a
part of such a university, should one be established ; but it is now to be
looked at only as an independent institution."
It was to embody and execute this conception that Mr.
Robbins drew the senate bill, No. 2Q2.
Finding themselves unable to agree, it was determined that
each* committee should report both of these bills to their respec
tive houses. On the twenty-fifth February, 1839, the bill drawn
by Mr. Robbins was taken up in this body, and, after an ani
mated discussion, was laid on the table by a vote of twenty to
fifteen. This vote is regarded, I perceive, by Mr. Adams in
his subsequent reports of 1840 and 1842, as expressing the
judgment of the senate against the establishment of such
academical institute of learning. He says, —
" It is, then, to be considered as a circumstance propitious to the flnal
disposal of this fund, by the organization of an institution the best adapted
to accomplish the design of the testator, that this first but erroneous im
pression of that design — an institute of learning, a university, upon the
foundation of which the whole fund should be lavished, and yet prove
inadequate to its purpose, without large appropriations of public moneys
in its aid — should have been presented to the consideration of congress,

252 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.^
referred to a numerous joint committee of both houses, there discussed,
reported for the deliberation of both houses, fully debated in the house
where it originated, and then decisively rejected."
If such raay be inferred to have been the judgment of
the senate, it may be defended on the raost decisive reasons.
It is hardly worth while to raove the question, whether it
would be expedient to apply the fund as far as it would go to
the founding of a great university deserving of the narae, — a
national university, in which all the branches of a thorough
education should be taught ; which should fill the space be
tween the college and professional schools, which should guide
the maturer American raind to the highest places of knowl
edge ; for such should be the functions of such a university.
It is not worth while to raove this question ; because no such
proposition is before us. I am afraid, with Mr. Adams, that
to found such a university would consurae the whole fund,
interest and principal, almost at once, and reduce you to the
alternative of a signal failure, or of occasional and frequent
application to the government for aid which could never be
granted. But the Senator frora Ohio conteraplates no such
thing. He constructs his college on a far raore moderate
model ; and of this coUege of his I am constrained to say, that
I think it, in the actual state of acaderaical education, wholly
unnecessary, and in a great degree useless. Why, Sir, there
are in the country raore than a hundred colleges ; I have seen
thera estimated at one hundred and seventy-three. These are
distributed all over the United States ; two are in this Dis
trict. They are at the doors of the people. I suspect that
every one of them has a professor for every department pro
vided for in this bill, except architecture and domestic science,
and agriculture and rural econoray. In every one, without
any difficulty, that special attention here recommended to the
application of science " to the ordinary business of life," raay
be, if it is not now, secured, if in the judgraent of those who
are intrusted with their raanageraent it is thought expedient.
Why, Sir, I recollect that navigation was taught in one at least
of our common, free district-schools of Massachusetts thirty
years ago. I cannot concur with the honorable framer of the
bUl, therefore, that his school is to " furnish facilities for the
acquisition of such branches of knowledge as are not taught

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 253
in the various universities." It wUl do no such thing. It will
injure those universities, rather, if it has any effect, by with
drawing from them sorae portion of the patronage fbr which
they are all struggling, and of which so few get a full raeal.
Such a school, then, I think, is scarcely now necessary. In
this city it would be, to say no more, very far from generally
useful. It would hardly appear to be an instrumentality cora
ing up to the sonorous proraise of " increasing and diffusing
knowledge araong men." Who would its pupUs be 1 Who
could afford to come all the way to Washington from the
South, West, and North, to learn architecture, navigation, and
domestic science "? Certainly only the sons of the wealthy,
who would hardly come, if they could, to learn any such
branch of homely knowledge. You might collect sorae few
students in the District and the borders of the adjacent States ;
but for any purpose of wide utility the school would be no
more felt than so much sunshine on the poles. Meantime,
here would be your professors, their salaries running on, your
books and apparatus and edifices, — a show of things, — a
pretty energetic diffusing of the fund, not much diff'usion of
knowledge. I shall venture, then, to move to strike out all those parts of
the bill which indicate the particular raode in which the bequest
is to be applied to the increase and diffusion of knowledge, I
except the provision for experiments in seeds and plants, on
which I wUl say a word hereafter. If this raotion prevails, the
whole question will recur. What shall we do with the fund ?
It has seeraed to rae that there are two applications of it
which raay just now meet with favor.
In the first place, to begin with the least important, — I adopt,
with some modifications, the suggestion in the bill that lectures
be delivered in this city for two or three months during every
session of congress. These lectures should be delivered not
by professors perraanently fixed here, upon annual salaries, to
do nothing in the recess of congress, or to do nothing that can
not be as well done at one hundred and fifty other places ; but
by gentlemen erainent in science and literature, holding situa
tions elsewhere, and coming hither under the stimulations and
with the arabition of a special and conspicuous retainer. They
might be professors of colleges, men of letters, persons dis-
VOL. II. 22

254 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
tinguished in the professions, or otherwise. Naraes will occur
to you all which I need not mention ; and their lectures should
be adapted to their audiences. Who would their audiences
be ] Members of congress with their families, members of the
government with theirs, sorae inhabitants of this city, sorae
few strangers who occasionally honor us with visits of curiosity
or business. They would be public raen, of raature years and
minds ; educated, disciplined to sorae degree, of liberal curios
ity, and appreciation of generous and various knowledge. Such
would be the audience. The lectures should be framed accord
ingly. I do not think they should be confined to three or four
physical sciences in their applications to tbe arts of life, — navi
gation, useful or hurtl'ul insects and animals, the ventilation of
rooms, or the smoking of chimneys.
This is knowledge, to be sure ; but it is not all knowledge,
nor the half of it, nor the best of it. Why should not such
an audience hear something of the philosophy of history, of
classical and of South American antiquities, of international
law, of the grandeur and decline of States, of the progress and
eras of freedom, of ethics, of intellectual philosophy, of art,
taste, and literature in its most coraprehensive and noblest
forras 1 Why should they not hear such lectures as Sir Jaraes
Mackintosh delivered when a young raan to audiences araong
whora were Canning, and such as he ^ Would it not be as
instructive to hear a first-rate scholar and thinker demonstrate
out of a chapter of Greek or Italian history how dreadful a
thing it is for a cluster of young and fervid democracies to
dwell side by side, independent and disunited,as it would to hear
a chemist raaintain that to raise wheat you must have some
certain proportion of lime in the soil ? But the subjects of
lectures would of course be adapted to tirae, place, and circum
stances, and varied with them. Whatever they should treat
of, they would be useful. They would recreate and refresh
and instruct you. They would relieve the monotony and
soften the austerity, and correct all the influences of this kind
of pubhc service.
But, Mr. President, all this is no administration ofthe fund;
all this ought to cost less than |5,000 a year. We could
not sustain raore than one lecture in a week, nor that for raore
than three months of any session. Here is an accuraulated

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 255
interest of |200,000 ; and here is an annual interest of
$30,000, of which thus far I have provided for an expenditure
of some $5000 only. What wiU you do with the rest 1
It is easy to waste this money ; it is easy to squander
it in jobs, salaries, quackeries ; it is easy, even under the
forras of utility, to disperse and dissipate it in little rills and
drops, imperceptible to all human sense, carrying it off' by an
insensible and ineffectual evaporation. But, Sir, I take it that
we all earnestly desire — I ara sure the Senator frora Ohio
does so — so to dispense it as to make it tell. I am sure we
all desire to see it, instead of being carried off invisibly and
wastefuUy, embody itself in some form, some exponent of civ
Uization, perraanent, palpable, conspicuous, useful. And to
this end it has seeraed to rae, upon the raost mature reflection,
that we cannot do a safer, surer, raore unexceptionable thing
with the incorae, or with a portion of the income, — perhaps
$20,000 a year for a few years, — than to expend it in accu
mulating a grand and noble public library, — one which, for
variety, extent, and wealth, shall be, and be confessed to be,
equal to any now in the world.
I say for a few years ; twenty thousand dollars a year, for
twenty-five years, are five hundred thousand dollars ; and five
hundred thousand dollars discreetly expended, not by a biblio
maniac, but by a man of sense and reading, thoroughly in
structed in bibliography, would go far, very far, towards the
purchase of nearly as good a library as Europe can boast.
I mean a library of printed books, as distinct frora manu
scripts. Of course such a sum would not purchase the num
ber of books which some old libraries are reported to contain.
It would not buy the seven hundred, thousand of the Royal
Library at Paris, the largest in the world ; not the five hun
dred thousand or six hundred thousand of that of Munich, the
largest in Germany ; not the three hundred thousand, four
hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand of those of
Vienna and St. Petersburg, and the Vatican at Rome, and
Copenhagen, and the Bodleian at Oxford. But mere numbers
of voluraes afford a very iraperfect criterion of value. Those
old libraries have been so long in collecting, accident and dona
tion, which could not be rejected, have contributed so much to
them, a general and indiscriminate system of accuraulation

256 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
gathers up, necessarUy, so much trash ; there are so many du
plicates and quadruphcates, and so raany books and editions
which become superseded, that raere bulk and mere original
cost must not terrify us. Ponderantur non numerantur. Ac
cordingly the library of the University at Gottingen, consisting
of perhaps two hundred thousand volumes, but well chosen,
selected for the most part, within a century, and to a consider
able extent by a single great scholar [Heyne], is perhaps to
day as valuable a collection of printed books as any in the
world. Towards the accumulation of such a library, the ex
penditure of two thirds of this income for a quarter of a cen
tury would make, let rae say, a magnificent advance. And
such a step taken, we should never leave the work unfinished ;
yet when it should be finished, and your library should rival
anything which civilization has ever had to show, there would
StiU be the whole principal of your fund unexpended, yield
ing its income forever, for new and varying application for
increasing and diffusing knowledge in the world.
[Mr. Choate here read a letter of Professor Torry of Bur
lington, showing at what reduced prices valuable books may
now be purchased.]
I hesitate, from an apprehension of being accused of enter
ing too far into a kind of dissertation unsuited to this assem
bly of raen of business, to suggest and press one half the
considerations which satisfy ray mind of the propriety of this
mode of expenditure. Nobody can doubt, I think, that it
comes within the terras and spirit of the trust. That directs us
to "increase and diffuse knowledge among raen." And do
not the judgments of all the wise, does not the experience
of all enlightened. States, — does not the whole history of
civilization, concur to declare that a various and ample library
is one of the surest, most constant, most permanent, and most
economical instrumentalities to increase and diff'use knowledge'?
There, it would be durable as liberty, durable as the Union, —
a vast storehouse, a vast treasury, of all the facts which make
up the history of man and of nature, so far as that history
has been written; of all the truths which the inquiries and
experiences of all the races and ages have found out ; of aU
the opinions that have been promulgated ; of all the eraotions,
images, sentiments, examples of all the richest and most in-

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 257
structive Uteratures ; the whole past speaking to the present
and the future ; a silent yet wise and eloquent teacher, dead,
yet speaking ; not dead ! for Milton has told us that a " good
book is not absolutely a dead thing, — the precious life-blood
rather of a raaster-spirit ; a seasoned life of raan embalmed
and treasured up on purpose to a hfe beyond life." Is not
that an admirable instrumentality to increase and diffuse
knowledge araong raen 1 It would place within the reach of
our raind, of our thinkers and investigators and scholars, all,
or the chief, inteUectual and literary raaterials and food and
instruraents now within the reach of the cultivated foreign
raind ; and the eff'ect would be to increase the araount of indi
vidual acquisition, and raultiply the number of the learned.
It would raise the standard of our scholarship, improve our
style of investigation, and coraraunicate an irapulse to our
educated and to the general raind. There is no library now
in this country, I suppose, containing over fifty thousand vol
umes. Many there are containing less. But, from the nature
of the case, all have the sarae works ; so that I do not know,
that of all the printed books in the world, we have in this
country raore than fifty thousand diff'erent works. The con
sequence has been felt and laraented by all our authors and all
our scholars. It has been often said that Gibbon's history
could not have been written here for want of books. I sup
pose that Hallam's " Middle Ages " and his " Introduction to
the Literature of Europe " could not. Irving's " Columbus "
was written in Spain. Wheaton's " Northmen " was prepared
to be written in Copenhagen. See how this inadequate sup
ply operates. An Araerican mind kindles with a subject ; it
enters on an investigation with a spirit and with an ability
worthy of the most splendid achievement ; goes a little way,
finds that a dozen books, one book perhaps, is indispensable,
which cannot be found this side of Gottingen or Oxford ; it
tires of the pursuit, or abandons it altogether, or substitutes
sorae shallow conjecture for a deep and accurate research, —
and there an end. Let- rae refer to a passage or two of the
complaints of studious men on this subject : —
" An extensive library, answering to the wants of literary men who
are to use it, is essential to the public and effectual promotion of learning.
In this country the want of large libraries is a serious discouragement of
22*

258 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
superior attainments and accurate researches in almost every walk of
study. The time necessary for reading or examining a particular book
is often consumed in attempts to discover or obtain it ; and frequently,
after every effort, it cannot be procured. We are obliged to give over our
inquiries on subjects where we would arrive at fulness and exactness in
our knowledge, because destitute of the assistance which the learned, in
the same track of study, have furnished, or to continue them under the
disadvantage of ignorance respecting what has been done by others.
Thus, we are liable to be occupied in solving difficulties which have been
already cleared, discussing questions which have been already decided,
and digging in mines of literature which former ages have exhausted.
Every one who has been in the way of pursuing any branch of study in
our country beyond the mere elements, or the polite and popular liter
ature of the time, knows how soon the progress is often arrested for
want of books. This is not the case merely with persons of moderate
means, who are unable to purchase a library of their own ; but it is a
want felt under the most favorable circumstances.
" It is also of great importance that the library of a university should
not only be good, but very good, — ample, munificent ; a deposit of the
world's knowledge. It is a grievous thing to be stopped short in the
midst of an inquiry for perhaps the very book that throws most light
upon it ; and the progress of learning must be small indeed among us, so
long as the student must send across the Atlantic at every turn for the
necessary aids to his pursuits. It is not with us as it is in Europe, where
very many large libraries exist, and where what is not contained in one
may be found in another ; and the learned are able to aid each other's
labors, by furnishing mutually, as desired, extracts and references to such
books as may exist at one place and fail at another. To say nothing of
our two best libraries being remote from each other and from many parts
of the country, they are themselves, of course, inadequate. In making
one tolerably complete department expressly chosen for that, and entirely
devoted to it, we might easily comprise the amount of books in our larg
est collection. When it is added that the libraries mentioned are miscel
laneous, their number of books small, as the sum total is scattered over
all the parts of knowledge, and many introduced by separate contribu
tions without mutual reference to each other, it is obvious that, compara
tively speaking, the best must be extremely defective." — North Ameri
can Review, vol. viii. p. 192.
" What public library in this country contains the materials for an
accurate history of any one department of science ? Take even the
most limited, or rather one of the most recent of all, — the science of
political economy. Here, our researches are confined to one definite
period. We have no dusty archives to explore, no time-worn manu
scripts to decipher. The origin of the science is within the memory of
our fathers, and we ourselves have witnessed its sudden growth and rapid
development. Yet how much is to be done, how many authorities to be
weighed, how many different treatises to be analyzed and compared,
before we can venture to say. Here is the history ; for such was the
rise, such the progress, such the changes of opinions, such the received
and such the rejected theories of political economy ! The writers of the

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 259
first French school, of the Scotch school (and if we wish for history, we
must go beyond the publication of Adam Smith's great work), the Italian,
the new French, and the new English schools, all have not merely a
claim upon our attention, but are entitled to a full and accurate exami
nation. And even then our task would be incomplete ; for literary jus
tice would require us to trace, through the works of general political
writers, the hints and remarks which have contributed to the progress of
the branch we are studying, by the discovery of truth or by the exposition
of error. If such be the obligation of the student whose researches are
confined to a subject so new, what must be the necessities of the historian
who attempts to throw light upon those periods for which the testimony
of printed authorities is to be confronted with that of manuscripts and
public documents, and where ignorance and prejudice have combined
with the more powerful incentives of interest to perplex his path by con
tradictory statements and conflicting opinions !
" Books are needed, not confined to any single branch, but embracing
the whole range of science and of literature, which shall supply the means
of every species of research and inquiry, and which, placed within reach
of all, shall leave idleness no excuse for the lightness of its labors, and
poverty no obstacles which industry may not surmount.
"Whoever reflects, though but for a moment, upon the numerous
branches into which modern literature runs, and remembers that the lit
erary glory of a nation can only be secured by a certain degree of success
in each of them — whoever considers the immense mass of varied materi
als without which no historical work of importance can be composed, or
the extensive learning which is required of even the most gifted genius
of an age like ours, and a^ds to these considerations the general and un
deniable fact that of those who would gladly devote themselves to litera
ture, but a few can ever hope to obtain by their own resources the com
mand of the works that are essential to the successful prosecution of their
studies, will be ready to acknowledge that we have, as yet, done but a
small part of what may be justly claimed from a nation which aspires to
the first rank for the liberality and politeness, and high moral tone of its
civilization. Late, however, as we are to begin, scarce anything in this
department has been accomplished in Europe whicb might not be done
with equal success in America. And so numerous and manifest are our
advantages in some important particulars, that a prompt will and sound
judgment in the execution of it might, in the course of a very few years,
render the American student nearly independent of those vast collections
which, in Europe have required centuries for their formation. The un
dertaking, however, in order to be successful, should be a national one.
Without arguing that no State is fully equal to it, or that in the bounds
of any single State it would not answer the same purpose, we may be
permitted to say that the enlargement of the library of congress upon
those broad principles, the application of which to the collection of books
has become a difficult and important art, would reflect an honor upon
the country equal to the permanent advantages which it would secure to
every member of the community." — North American Review, vol. xlv.
p. 137.

260 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Yet these writers had access to the best library in this
country. •
Now, there are very many among us, and every day we
shall have more, who would feelingly adopt this language.
Place within their reach the helps that guide the genius and
labors of Gerraany and England; and let the genius and labors
of Germany and England look to themselves ! Our learned
men would grow more learned and more able ; our studies
deeper and wider ; our mind itself exercised and sharpened ;
the whole culture of the coraraunity raised and enriched. This
is, indeed, to increase and diff'use knowledge araong men.
If the terms of the trust, then, authorize this expenditure,
why not make it '? Not among the principal, nor yet the least
of reasons for doing so, is, that all the while that you are lay
ing out your raoney, and when you have laid it out, you have
the raoney 's worth, the value received, the property purchased,
on hand, to show for itself and to speak for itself. Suppose
the professors provided for in the bill should gather a little
circle of pupUs, each of whora should carry off" with him some
small quotient of navigation, or horticulture, or rural econoray,
and the fund should thus glide away and evaporate in such in
sensible, inappreciable appropriations, how little would there be
to testify of it ! Whereas here, all the whUe, are the books ;
here is the value ; here is the visible property ; here is the oil,
and here is the light. There is soraething to point to, if you
should be asked to account for it unexpectedly, and soraething
to point to, if a traveller should taunt you with the collections
which he has seen abroad, and which gUd and recomniend the
absolutisms of Vienna or St. Petersburg.
Another reason, not of the strongest to be sure, for this
mode of expenditure is, that it creates so few jobs and sine
cures ; so little salaried laziness. There is no room for abuses
in it. All that you need is a plain, spacious, fire-proof build
ing ; a librarian and assistants ; an agent to buy your books,
and a fire to sit by. For all the rest, he who wants to read
goes and ministers to himself. It is an application of money
that alraost excludes the chances of abuses altogether.
But the decisive arguraent is, after all, that it is an applica
tion the raost exactly adapted to the actual literary and scien
tific wants of the States and the country. I have said that

^ ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 261
another college^ is not needed here, because there are enough
now ; and another raight do harra as rauch as good. But that
which is wanted for every college, for the whole country, for
every studious person, is a well-chosen library, somewhere
among us, of three or four hundred thousand books. Where
is such a one to be collected 1 How is it to be done ? Who
is to do it 1 Of the hundred and fifty colleges, raore or less,
distributed over the country, one has a library of perhaps fifty
thousand voluraes ; others have good ones, though less ; others
sraaller, and smaller, down to scarcely anything. With one
voice they unite, teacher and pupil, with every scholar and
thinker, in proclaiming the want of more. But where are they
to come frora ? No State is likely to lay a tax to create a col
lege library, or a city library. No death-bed gift of the rich
can be expected to do it. flow, then, is this one grand want
of learning to be relieved 1 It can be done by you, and by you
only. By a providential occurrence, it is not only placed
within your constitutional power, but it has become your duty ;
you have pledged your faith ; you have engaged to the dead
and living that, without the charge of one dollar on the people,
you will meet the universal and urgent deraand by the pre
cise and adequate supply. By such a library as you can col
lect here soraething will be done, rauch will be done, to help
every college, every school, every studious mau, eyery writer
and thinker in the country to just what is wanted raost. In
quirers after truth may corae here and search for it. It will
do no harm at all to pass a few studious weeks araong these
scenes. Having pushed their investigations as far as they may
at home, and ascertained just what, and how rauch raore, of
helps they require, let thera come hither and find it. Let them
replenish themselves, and then go back and make distribution
among their pupils ; ay, through the thousand channels, and
by the thouslmd voices of the press, let them raake distribution
araong the people ! Let it be so that —
" Hither as to their fountains other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns, draw light."
I have no objection at all — I should rejoice rather — to
see the literary representatives of an instructed people corae
hither, not raerely for the larger legislation and jurisprudence,
but for the rarer and higher knowledge. I am quite willing,

262 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
not only that our " Araphictyonic Council " should sit here,
but that it should find itself araong sorae such scenes and in
fluences as surrounded that old, renowned asserably ; the foun
tain of purer waters than those of Castalia ; the teraple and
the oracle of our Apollo ! It will do good to have your edu
cated raen corae to Washington for what has heretofore cost
voyages to Gerraany. They will be of all the parts of the
country. They will becorae acquainted with each other.
They will contract friendships and rautual regards. They
will go away not only better scholars, but better Unionists.
Sorae one has said that a great library raoulds all minds into
one republic. It might, in a sense of which he little dreamed,
help to keep ours together.
1 have intiraated, Mr. President, a doubt whether a college
or university of any description, even the highest, should be
at present established here. But let it be considered by the
enlightened friends of that object, if such there are, that even
if your single purpose were to create such a university, you
could possibly begin in no way so judiciously as by collecting
a great library. Useful in the other raodes whicli I have in
dicated, to a university it is everything. It is as needful as
the soul to the body. WhUe you are doubting, then, what to
do, what you wUl have, you can do nothing so properly as to
begin to be accumulating the books which you will require, on
whatever perraanent plan of application you at last determine.
I do not expect to hear it said in this assembly that this
expenditure for a library will benefit a few only, not the raass ;
that it is exclusive, and of the nature of raonopoly. It is to
be remembered that this fund is a gift ; that we take it just as
it is given ; and that by its terms it must be disbursed here.
Any possible administration of it, therefore, is exposed to the
cavil that all cannot directly and literally and equally partake
of it. How raany and of what classes of youth -frora Louisi
ana, or Illinois, or New England, for exaraple, can attend the
lectures of your professor of astronoray 1 But I say it is a
positive and important arguraent for the mode of application
which I urge, that it is so diff'usive. Think of the large abso
lute numbers of those who in the succession of years, will come
and partake directly of these stores of truth and knowledge !
Think of the nurabers without nuraber who through them,

ON THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 263
who by thera indirectly, will partake of the same stores !
Studious men will come to learn to speak and write to and for
the growing miUions of a generally educated coraraunity.
They wUl learn that they raay communicate. They cannot
hoard if they would, and they would not if they could. They
take in trust to distribute ; and every motive of arabition, of
interest, of duty, will compel them to distribute. They buy in
gross, to sell by retail. The lights which they kindle here
will not be set under a bushel, but wUl burn on a thousand
hUls. No, Sir ; a rich and public library is no anti-republican
monopoly. Who was the old Egyptian king that inscribed on
his library the words : the dispensary of the soul 1 You might
quite as well inscribe on it, armory and light and fountain of
liberty !
It may possibly be inquired what account I make of the
library of congress. I answer, that I think it already quite
good, and iraproving ; but that its existence constitutes no sort
of arguraent against the forraation of such a one as I recom
mend. In the theory of it, that library is collected raerely to
furnish congress and the governraent with the raeans of doing
their official business. In its theory it raust be, in sorae sort,
a professional library ; and the expenditure we now raake —
five thousand dollars in a year, or, as last year, two thousand
and five hundred — can never carry it up to the rank and en
able it to fulfil the functions of a truly great and general public
library of science, literature, and art. The value of books
which could be added under the appropriations of the last
year, cannot greatly exceed twenty-two hundred dollars.
Doubtless, however, in the course of forraing the two, it
would be expedient and inevitable to procure to a great ex
tent diff'erent books for each.
I do not think, Mr. President, that I am raore inclined than
another to covet enviously anything which the older civilization
of Europe possesses which we do not, I do not suppose that
I desire, any raore than you, or than any of you, to introduce
here those vast inequalities of fortune, that elaborate luxury,
that fantastic and extrerae refinement. But I acknowledge a
pang of envy and grief that there should be one drop or one
morsel more of the bread or water of intellectual life tasted by
the European than by the American mind. Why should not

264 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
the soul of this country eat as good food and as much of it as
the soul of Europe "? Why should a German or an English
man sit down to a repast of five hundred thousand books, and
an Araerican scholar, who loves truth as well as he, be put on
soraething less than half allowance ? Can we not trust our
selves with so much of so good a thing 1 Will our digestion
be irapaired by it? Are we afraid that the stiraulated and
fervid faculties of this young nation will be oppressed and
overlaid 1 Because we have liberty which other nations have
not, shall we reject the knowledge which they have and which
we have not 1 Or will you not rather say, that, because we
are free, therefore will we add to our freedora that deep learn
ing and that diff'used culture which are its grace and its de
fence 1
[Mr. Choate then moved certain amendments in conformity
with the views of his speech.]

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

VOL. n. 23

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

SPEECH BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN'S WHIG CLUB OF
BOSTON, ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.
DELIVEBED Df THE TEEMONT TEMPLE, AXJOtTST 19, 1844.

[The meeting having been called to order by Charles Francis Adams,
President of the Club, Mr. Choate was introduced. He came forward
and spoke as follows :]
Mk. Pkesident and Gentlemen, —
I REGARD the approaching election as one of more inter
est to the whole country, and to the States of the North in a
preeminent degree, than any which has preceded it. The
peculiarity of this election is, that while it involves all the
questions of mere policy, which are ever suspended on the
choice of a president, — questions of the currency, of the
lands, of internal improvements, of protection, of foreign
policy, and all else ; while it involves in its broadest ex-
tept the question, how shall the nation be governed? — it
involves — the first presidential election that has done so —
the further, raore fundaraental, and raore startling question,
what shall the nation be; who shall the nation be; where shall
the nation be ; who, what, and where, is, and is to be, our
country itself? Is it to be any longer the Union which we
have known; which we have loved, to which we have been
accustomed? — or is it to be dissolved altogether? or is it to
be a new one, enlarged by the annexation of a territory out of
which forty States of the size of Massachusetts might be
constructed ; a territory not appended equally to the East, the
West, the Centre, and the South ; not appended equally to the
slave States and the free States; to the agricultural and the

268 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
planting; to the localities of free trade and the localities of
protection; not so appended as to work an equal and impartial
enlargement and assistance to each one of those various and
heterogeneous eleraents of interest and sentiraent and position
out of whose struggle comes the peace, out of whose disso
nance coraes the harraony, of our system ; — not so, but ap
pended in one vast accession to one side, one region, one
interest, of the many which corapose the State ; so appended
as to disturb the relations of the parts ; to change the seat of
the centre ; to counteract the natural tendencies of things ; to
substitute a revolution of violent and raorbid policy in place of
the slow and safe action of nature, habit, and business, under a
perraanent law ; so appended, in short, as not raerely to raake
a sraall globe into a larger one, but to alter the whole figure of
the body; to vary the shape and the range of its orbit; to
launch it forth on a new highway of the heavens ; to change
its day and night, its seed-lime and harvest, its solar year, the
great cycle of its duration itself.
This it is that gives tp this election an interest peculiar and
transcendent. It is a question, not what the policy of the
nation shall be, — but what, who, where, shall the nation be I
It is not a question of national politics, but of national identity.
For even if the Union shall survive the annexation of Texas,
and the discussions of annexation, it will be a new, a changed,
another Union, — not this. It wUl be changed, not by time,
which changes all things, — man, monuments, states, the great
globe itself; not by tirae, but by power ; not by imperceptible
degrees, but in a day; not by a successive growth, unfolded
and urged forward by an organic law, an implanted force, a
noiseless and invisible nutrition from beneath and from without,
of which every region, every State, takes the risk ; but by tlie
direct action of government — arbitrary, violent, and unjust — of
which no part has ever agreed to take the risk. It is to this
eleraent in the present election, the annexation of Texas, that I
wish to-night, passing over all the rest, to direct your attention.
I shall consurae but little of the tirae of such an assembly
as this, in attempting to prove that the success or failure of
this enterprise of annexation is suspended — for the present —
perhaps for our day — on the result of the pending election.
You, at least, have no doubt on this point. Is there one man

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 269
now before rae, in the first place, who does not believe, or who
does not greatly and rationally fear, that if Mr. Polk is the
next president, Texas wiU come in — under the unostentfitious,
and not so very terrible forra of a territory, of course, in the
first instance — in twelve raonths, unless some great and ex
traordinary interposition of the people should prevent it ?
Does any one — if such an one raay be supposed araong you
to-night — who, opppsed to Texas, as you are, has yet a hank
ering for Mr. Polk, and raeans to vote for him, if he can
obtain the consent of his conscience — who wants to vote for
Mr. Polk, but shrinks frora the idea of promoting annexation
— does any such one say. Oh, it doesn't follow that if he is
chosen, Texas will be annexed ? Be it so ; but does it not
increase the chances of annexation ? Does it not tremendously
enhance the difficulties of resistance? Does it not at least,
expose you to the terrible hazard of being compelled, here
after, to encounter, by memorial, by convention, by remon
strance, by extrerae and extraordinary action, that which you
can now, peaceably, innocently, seasonably anticipate and pre
vent at the polls ? Does not every stock-jobber, and land-
jobber, and flesh-jobber, who claraors for annexation, 'under
stand perfectly, that he aids his objects by choosing Mr. Polk ?
Are not those honest gentleraen all on his side, and do they
not well know what they are about? Does not Mr. Polk
come in — if he comes — pledged to annex if he can, and
determined to do it if he can ? Does he not come in pledged
and deterrained to put in requisition the whole vast power of
the Executive — the whole vast power of the flushed party
that elects hira, and to effect annexation ? Is any raan foolish
enough to deny, that Mr. Van Buren was cast overboard, and
Mr. Polk norainated, expressly and solely that the candidate
might be, as they exquisitely express it, " Texas to the back
bone ? " — And how can you suppose that, norainated for this
very purpose, elected for this very purpose, he will do nothing
to accoraplish it? Why, if he should be disposed to do noth
ing, do you think that a party or a factioh, strong enough to
go into a National Convention, and there traraple instructions
under foot ; strong enough to force upon the body an auda
cious, not very deraocratic rule of proceeding, which put it out
of the power of a raajority to norainate the choice of a raajor-
23*

270

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

ity ; strong enough to laugh Colonel Benton and Mr. Wright
in the face ; strong enough, not raerely to divide Mr. Butler's
last crust with him, but to snatch the whole of it; strong
enough to ejaculate Mr. Van Buren out of the window —
under whom they had once triumphed — on whom they rallied
again in six months after the defeat of 1840, and who had
been their candidate as notoriously and avowedly as Mr.
Clay had been ours — and of whora no raan of any party will
deny, that in point of accoraplishraent and talent and experi
ence of public affairs, he is immeasurably Mr. Polk's superior;
strong enough to have dissolved that convention in a half an
hour, had it not conceded their utmost deraands — ruining if
they could not rule ; — if Mr. Polk should be disposed to do
nothing, do you believe such a party, or such a faction as this,
would permit hira to do nothing? No. No. Desperately,
weakly, fatally, does he deceive hiraself who will not see, that
everything which an Executive, elected expressly to do this
deed, can do, will be done, and done at once ! He wUl put it
forward in his very first message. He will put it forward as
the one, grand raeasure of his party, and of his adrainistration.
Nothing will be left unstirred to effect it. The farewell words
of General Jackson will be rung in adrairing and subservient
ears. Aye, that drura shall be beaten, which might call the
dead of aU his battles to the " raidnight review," in shadowy
files ! The measure will not be attempted again, in the first
instance, in the form of a treaty, requiring two thirds of the
senate, but in the forra of a law, requiring a raajority of only
one. Do you say such a majority cannot be commanded? Do
not be too sure of that. I pray you, give no vote, withhold
no vote, on such a speculation as that. Do not, because
President Tyler has not been able to comraand a majority —
President Tyler, without a party, with one whole division of the
Democratic party, with Colonel Benton and Mr. Wright at its
head, against hira; vvith the Southern Whigs, under the season
able and iraportant lead of Mr. Clay, against hira to a man — do
not, because under these special and temporary circumstances,
he has not been able to obtain a raajority, therefore, lay the
flattering unction to your soul, that when a president who has
a party, and that party a raajority of the people, flushed with
a recent victory won on this precise issue, shall try his hand at

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 27 1
the business ; when Colonel Benton — the temporary and special
circumstances of his recent resistance having subsided — shall
resurae his natural and earlier position; and "La Salle" and
"Americanus" shall be himself again ; when Southern Whigs,
no longer rallying to the lead of Mr. Clay, shall resume their
natural position, or shall divide on the question ; when the
whole tactics of party, the united or general strength of the
South, the vast and multiform influence of a strong Executive
shall be corabined ; when the raeasure coraes to be pressed,
under every specious narae, by aid of every specious topic of
patriotisra and aggrandizeraent; when, if any one, or two, or
ten, or twenty merabers of congress should raanifest syrap
toras of recusancy, or should try the eff'ect of a little. " sweet,
reluctant, araorous delay," the weird sisters of ambitious hearts
shall play before their eyes images of foreign missions, and
departraents, and benches of justice — do not deceive your
selves into the belief, that the raajority of one will not be
secured. I speak now of the admission of Texas as a mere
territory. The erection of that territory into States will be a
very diff'erent undertaking — later, less proraising, a far raore
dreadful trial of the ties of Union. Of that I have soraething
to say hereafter ; but I have no doubt whatever, and I feel it
to be an urgent duty to declare it, that the territory, as terri
tory, will be adraitted in twelve raonths after Mr. Polk's elec
tion, unless some extraordinary interposition of the people, on
which I dare not speculate, shall prevent it.
[Mr. Choate then proceeded to observe upon a letter, which he had
read in the " National Intelligencer," signed by seven prominent mem
bers of the Democratic party in New York, including the accomplished
editor of the " Evening Post," in which the writers declare their purpose
of supporting Mr. Polk, but recommend the election of members of con
gress " who will reject the unwarrantable scheme now pressed on the
country." He remarked on the concessions of the letter, to wit : " that
the Baltimore convention had placed the Democratic party at the North
in a position of great difficulty ; " that it exposed the party to the constant
taunt " that the convention rejected Mr. Van Buren and nominated Mr.
Polk, for reasons connected with the immediate annexation of Texas;"
" that it went still further and interpolated into the party creed a new
doctrine, hitherto unknown among us, — at war with some of our estab
lished principles, and abhorrent to the opinions and feelings of a great
majority of Northern freemen ! " And he doubted whether a State which
should give its vote for a president nominated solely for the very purpose
of annexing Texas, would or could, in the same breath, elect members of

272 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
congress to go and defeat the " scherae," — " unwarrantable" enough, no
doubt, but yet the precise and single " scheme " which Mr. Polk was
brought forward to accomplish, — and whether they, or such as they, who
surrendered to the candidate at Baltimore, would be very likely to beard
and baffle the incumbent at Washington. He then resumed :]
The election of Mr. Polk, then, will, or may probably annex
Texas as a territory. The election of Mr. Clay defeats or
postpones it indefinitely. Some persons pretend to doubt, or
at least seem to deny this. But do they do him, themselves,
and the great subject, justice ? Read his letter upon this sub
ject; observe the broad and perraanent grounds of exclusion
which he there sketches ; advert to the well-weighed declara
tion, that, so long as any considerable opposition to the measure
shall be manifested, he will resist it ; and you cannot fail to
see that unless you yourselves, — unless Massachusetts and
Verraont and Ohio, — should withdraw their opposition, for
his terra at least, you are safe, and aU are safe. That letter,
in ray judgraent, raakes him a title to every anti-Texas vote in
America. The circumstances under which it was given to the
world, I happened well to know. It was before either conven
tion had asserabled at Baltimore. It was as yet, to me at least,
uncertain what ground Mr. Van Buren would take. Warra
friends of Mr. Clay in congress would have dissuaded him
from immediate publication. They feared its eff'ect even on
the Whig convention itself; they feared its wider and raore
perraanent eff'ect. Wait a little, they said. Feel the pulse of
the delegates as they come to Washington. Attend for a few
days the rising voice of the general press of the South. He
rejected these counsels of indecision, and directed it to be
given to the country. In my judgment, that act saved the
country. It fixed and rallied the universal Whig opinion upon
this subject instantly, and everywhere. It suspended the warra
feelings of the South, untU its sober second thought could dis
cern, as now it has begun to discern, that fair and terapting as
this forbidden fruit shows to the sense, it brings with it death,
and all woe, with loss of Eden. The position which Mr. Clay
held, — the inhabitant of a slave State ; his birth-place Vir
ginia; the part he transacted in the Missouri controversy;
his known and intense Araericanisra of feehng, eager enough,
eager in the raan as in the boy, to lay hold of every occa-

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 273
sion to carry up his country to the loftiest surarait of a dura
ble and just glory, and therefore not disinclined to raere
enlargement of territory, if the acquisition had been just, pru
dent, equitable, honorable — this felicity of position enabled
him to do what few other men of even equal capacity and
patriotisra could do ; enabled hira to quench in the spark, if
now the people sustain hira, this stupendous conception of
madness and of guilt.
If the election of Mr. Polk, then, may annex Texas, and that
of Mr. Clay defeat or indefinitely postpone it, what are the moral
duties of the opponents of annexation, of all parties ? You are
a Democrat, for exaraple, and you would, on every other account
than this of Texas, desire the success of the Deraocratic ticket.
You are an Abolitionist, and without expecting the success of
your ticket, you would desire to give it the utraost practicable
appearance of growth and strength. But can you, in sense
and fairness, say, that all the other good which, even on your
principles, the election of Mr. Polk, or the exhibition of a
growing vote for Mr. Birney, would accoraplish, or all the
.other evils which either of these results would prevent, would
corapensate for the various and the transcendent evil of annex
ation ? Can you doubt, when you calmly weigh all the other
good which you achieve by effecting your object against the
mischief you do by annexation, — can you doubt that the least
thing which you owe your conscience, your country, the utmost
which pride and consistency have a right to exact of you, is
neutrality ? You will not say, for instance, that you believe,
that a mere postponement of Democratic ascendency for five
years wiU perraanently and irreparably irapair the Constitution,
and the prosperity of our country, or bereave her of a ray of
her glory ? She can endure so long, even you do not doubt,
the evil of the politics which you disapprove. She can afford
to wait so long, even you will adrait, for the politics which
you prefer. But the evil of annexation is as iraraediate as
irretrievable, and as eternal as it is enorraous ! Time, terms of
presidential office, ages, instead of healing, will but display,
wiU but exasperate, the immedicable wound ! Yes, yes ! He
who, some space hereafter — how long, how brief that space,
you may not all taste of death until you know — he who —
another Thucydides, another Sismondi — shall observe and

274

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

shall paint a Union dissolved, the silver cord loosed, the
golden bowl broken at the fountain ; he who shall observe and
shall paint the nation's flag folded raournfuUy, and laid aside
in the silent charaber where the raeraorials of renown and
grace, now dead, are gathered together ; who shall record the
ferocious factions, the profligate arabition, the hot rivalry, the
wars of hate, the truces of treachery, — which shall furnish
the raatter of the history of alienated States, till one after
another burns out and falls from its place on high, — he shaU
entitle this stained and mournful chapter, the Consequences of
Annexation. But look at this business a little more in its detaUs.
I will not move the question of its effect on American slav
ery. Whether it will transplant the stricken race from old
States to new ; whether it will concentrate it on a different,
larger or smaller area than it now covers, whether the result
of this again would be to increase or diminish its numbers,
its sufferings, and its chances of ultimate emancipation — this
is a speculation from which I retire. I repeat what I had the
honor to say in the debate on the treaty, that the avowed and
the direct object of annexation certainly is, to prevent the
abolition of slavery on a vast region which would else be
come free. The iraraediate effect intended and secured in the
first instance, therefore, certainly is the diff'usion and increase
of slavery. So far we see. So much we know. More than
that, no raan can be certain that he sees or knows. Whether
this is to work an araelioration of the status of slavery whUe
it lasts, or to shorten its duration, is in His counsels, " who
out of evil still educes good in infinite progression." The raeans
we see are evil. The first eff'ect is evil. The end is uncertain.
But, if it were certain and were good, we may not do evil that
good raay come. WhUe, therefore, I feel it to be my duty dis
tinctly to say, that I would leave to the masters of slaves every
guaranty of the Constitution and the Union — the Constitution
as it is, the Union as it is, — without which there is no security
for you or for them — no, not for a day, — I stUl controvert the
power, I deny the raorality, I trerable for the consequences, of
annexing an acre of new territory, /or the mere purpose of dif
fusing this great evil, this great curse, over a wider surface of
American earth. StUl less would I, for such a purpose merely.

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 275
lay hold on such a territory as Texas, larger than France, and
alraost as fair ; least of all now, just when the spirit of hberty
is hovering over it, in act to descend.
But trace the consequences of annexation on ourselves.
First, chief, raost coraprehensive, and raost irretrievable of its
evils, will be its disastrous aspect on the durability of the
Union. Texas, let us suppose, the territory, as territory, is
annexed. The war with Mexico is at an end. The valor of
the West has triuraphed. The debt of the war, the debt of
Texas is funded. Time passes. New States carved out of its
ample fields knock for admission into the Union. Do you
consider that it raay cut up into forty as large as Massa
chusetts ? But suppose twenty, fifteen, ten, five, only — apply
one after another. Is there a raan, out of a mad-house, who
does not see that five, three, one, such application could not be
acted on, and either rejected or granted, without shaking this
governraent to its foundation ? Is there a raan who does not
see that if aU the raalice and all the ingenuity of Hell were
appealed to, to devise one fiery and final trial of the strength
of our Araerican feeling, of our fraternal love, of our apprecia
tion of the uses of union, of all our bonds of political brother
hood, it could contrive no ordeal half so dreadful as this ? To
me this seems so palpable, that I have doubted whether Colonel
Benton is not right in his conjecture that disunion is the exact
object aimed at by some of the movers of annexation. Cer
tainly, in looking over that grim beadroU of South Carolina
toasts and dinner-speeches which covers a broadside of the last
" Intelligencer," it is quite impossible to resist the conclusion
that, as regards sorae individuals of this, body of annexationists,
either they are laboring under very treasonable politics, or
that their raadeira has quite too rauch brandy in it. I will
say, too, of any annexationist, who thinks that because we
survived the Missouri question, it would be a pretty thing to
move a half-dozen more such questions, that he raeans to sever
the States, or is profoundly ignorant of the way by which they
are to be kept together. Does he consider under what totaUy
diiferent circurastances these new Missouri questions would
break out, frora those which attended the old ! Does he con
sider that the territory of Missouri was already parcel of the
United States, aud had been so for near twenty years ; that,

276

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

unlike Texas, it had been annexed as part of Louisiana, with
no view at all to the diff'usion and perpetuation of slavery;
but on grounds of policy which the severest raoralist, the
strictest expounder of the Constitution, the most passionate
lover of liberty, might approve ; and, therefore, that having
been received as a territory diverso intuitu, the public sen
sibility was less shocked by its emergence into a slave State
than now it would be, when the end and aim of the original
acquisition is slavery, wholly slavery, and nothing but slavery?
Does he reflect how vast a change the sentiments of civiliza
tion have undergone on that whole subject since eighteen
hundred and twenty ? Does he reraeraber that in that learn
ing the world is five hundred years older than it was then ?
Can he not read the gathering signs of the tiraes ? Does he
not mark the blazing characters traced by the bodiless hand,
as in the unfinished picture ? Does he not reraeraber what the
nations have done, and especially what England has done,
within twenty years ? Does he not see and feel that in that
interval, a public opinion has been generated, has been organ
ized, wholly new, aggressive, intolerant of the sight, intolerant
of the cry, of raan in chains ? Does he not see and feel with
what electrical force and speed it strikes frora one quarter of
the globe to another, and is spreading to enfold the whole
civilized world like an atraosphere ? Does he think it wise to
blow such an atraosphere into a hurricane of fiarae ? Does he
really expect to bring his five States into the Union ? Is he
not sure of faUing, and is he not seeking a pretext for flying in
a passion ; for complaining that territory constitutionaUy enti
tled to admission is excluded, and thereupon for retiring from
the Union, if he can, hiraself? However this maybe, I say
that he means to sever the States, or he is profoundly ignorant,
or criminally reckless, of the temper and the policy by which
they are to be holden together.
I would have him, who desires adequately to comprehend
the probable influence of annexation on the durability of the
Union, and its influence on the temper find feelings of the
States composing the Union, one towards another, to consider
also, whether, over and above these eternal antipathies of hb
erty and slavery, which it must kindle into inextinguishable
flame — whether over and above these, this measure will not

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.

277

appear, and ought not to appear, to be a mere attempt to
retain, or to give, to one region and one interest of the repub
lic, an ascendancy, to which, as against the others, it is not
entitled ? Is there not vast danger, that in this way, it wil]
array States, and regions of States, against each other, on a
contest of interest, of business, of relative local power ? WiU
it not be regarded as aff'rontive to the pride, as a usurpation on
the constitutional rights, as raenacing to the pockets, of portions
of the people of Araerica, as well as an outrage on the senti
ment of liberty and the spirit of the age ? How can it be
defended, on the principles of our political association ? The
generation of our fathers, who framed the Union, saw as well
as we do the great natural regional divisions of the country.
They foresaw, as well as we now see, that one of these regions
might come to prefer one system of industrial governraental
policy, and another to prefer another ; that one raight incline
to free trade, and another to protection; that one raight a little
more solicitously favor the interests of cotton-planting; an
other, those of navigation ; another, those of general agricul
ture ; another, those of the raechanical and manufacturing arts.
They foresaw that in this way, there might grow to be such
a thing as a Southern, or a Western, or a Central, or an
Eastern administration, — each of which should be a constitu
tional administration, — and yet, the policy of each might take
a tincture from the locality which predominated in its origin
and composition. They foresaw, too, that there would come
to be, what you would call Southern influence and Western
influence and Central influence and Eastern influence; that
these would strive together, without rest, for araicable mastery ;
and they fondly dreamed, or rationally hoped, that out of this
opposition and counteraction, " this reciprocal struggle of dis
cordant powers," might flow a harmony that should never end.
They foresaw, too, that in the progress of time, the operation of
natural causes might change, and change often, all those rela
tions which raarked the era of 17^9. The young cotton-plant
of the South, scarcely known to art or coraraerce then, raight
place or raight keep the fair and fertile region that alone
produced it, for ages, at the head of the confederacy. The
exhaustless soil and temperate cliraate of the West raight
attract and seat the centre of power there, — on the irapurpled
VOL. II. 24

278

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

prairie, — by the shores of inland oceans. Labor and liberty
and culture might sometimes win it back to the rock of Ply
mouth, to the battle-fields of Bunker HiU and Bennington, to
the summits of our granite mountains, to the side of our bridal
sea. Of all these alternations, they intended that the people
of America, the people of each region of America, should
take the risk. Of all these, we are ready to take the risk. Of
all these, we always have run the risk. But there is one thing,
of which the framers of the Constitution never meant that
we or any region should take the risk ; and that is, that any
region, any interest, should call in foreign allies to prolong and
augment an ascendancy, which, under the action of natural
causes, might be imagined to be passing away ! They never
raeant that the North should call in the Canadas, or Newfound
land, or Greenland, for the sole purpose of giving us raore
votes in congress for lumber duties, or potash duties, or peltry
duties, or fishing bounties, or the protection of wool. They
never meant that the South should bring in Mexico, or Cuba,
for the sole purpose of voting down the tariff', or maintaining
any dorainion or any institution, raerely because the broad,
deep, and resistless streara of tirae was threatening to bear it
silently away. No ! No ! That is not the Union we came
into. That is not the race we set out to run. We agreed to
love, honor, and cherish, a certain national identity. We agreed
to place ourselves in the power of a certain national identity.
We agreed to take our chance, of any constitutional admin
istration of governraent ; any fashion of politics ; any pre-
dorainance of interests, opinions, and institutions, to which that
might constitutionally subject us. But we did not agree to love
— we did not agree to be governed by — all creation! We did
not agree that the merchants of Matanzas, the gold miners of
Mexico, the logwood cutters of Honduras, the Indian traders
of Santa Fe, Coahuila, or Chihuahua, whose "barbarous appel
lations " we can neither pronounce nor spell, should make
our laws. Non hcec in foedera veni! Take care lest the
people of all regions, but one, should give the translation, —
" We made no such bargain, and we stand no such non
sense." With these irapressions of the evils of annexation, it is diffi
cult to suppress a sentiraent of indignation at what would oth-

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 279
erwise deserve nothing but ridicule, — the reasons which men
give for this measure, who are asharaed or afraid to give the
true one. " Texas is so fair and fertile," they say ; as if this
were not just as good an arguraent for annexing France — a
better one, since France, though not so large, is fairer and
more fertile. " It will increase our exportations of cotton and
sugar so rauch " — as if we should not grasp Egypt and Bra
zil and Hindostan on that reason ; as if Colonel Holraes's let
ter, just published, did not tell us that the consumption of cot
ton is already stationary in England and France, and that the
thing airaed at by South Carolina is not to increase the sup
ply against that deraand, but to increase the deraand, by in
creasing English ability to consume ; and to do that by giving
to the English manufacturers the market of America. " The
waters of Texas flow into our Mississippi, and therefore it
would be impious not to reunite what nature had joined." Ira-
pious ! — as if there would not be exactly the same clamor for
it, if its waters flowed into I know not what lake, of fire or of
death ! " It will consurae such unknown quantities of north
ern raanufactures." Unknown, indeed ! as if we were quite
so verdant as not to be perfectly aware that the precise object
of some of the more prorainent raovers of this business is to get
Texan votes to stop your mills, not Texan customers to buy
your cloth ; that sorae of those men would be glad to-day, to
see you send your children or your horses to England to be
shod ; that what they notoriously aim at, is not at all an in
creased ability to consume your manufactures, but an increased
vote against your tariff', and an easier victory over your labor.
" Texas will admit British goods, duty free, or under low
duties, and they will be smuggled in such quantities into the
United States, as to diminish our revenue, and evade our law
of protection ! " — a reason which I am sorry to see receive
the sanction of a convention of Massachusetts men, of what
ever politics, — scarcely satisfactory, I venture to conjecture,
to any raanly-rainded and intelligent member of that body of
our Democratic fellow-citizens, who have just made their norai
nation of governor ; as if Texas, starved to death, crushed,
paralyzed, for want of money — Texas, almost corapelled to
let go the sweet and proud boon of national independence, be
cause she has not the financial ability to assert her title to it —

280 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
as if she can afford to admit English goods free of duty, or
under duties so far below our own as to warrant such an
absurd apprehension ; as if all Louisiana and Arkansas aud
Missouri were going to form a great copartnership of smug
gling with Yorkshire and Liverpool ; as if, on this hypothesis,
you must not have Mexico too, for she is under English influ
ence, and will lend a hand to this hopeful scherae of turning
the flank of the tariff"; and Canada, — which is England her
self, — in direct contact with raore States than Texas touches ;
— nay, as if you raust not, as a good Alabaraa Whig said,
make up your minds to have " no outside row at all, for the
squirrels to eat;" and so strike dead to the water all round, at
once, not forgetting your right to a marine league, of say a
couple of thousand miles long, to prevent hovering on your
coasts. No, Fellow-citizens, there is no case raade for annexation at
all. Let hira who is raaking his mind up on that subject, and
who desires to do so, not in the small spirit of a narrow and
local selfishness, but as a patriot, a Unionist, a statesman, a
Christian, a lover of his kind ; let him unroll the map of our
territory as now we hold it, broad, boundless as an ocean; let
him, on that raap, observe how that territory spreads itself out
frora the St. John to the Sabine, eight and twenty hundred
railes of coast, and inland to the Rocky Mountains, aye, to the
great tranquil sea, raore than thirty-five hundred railes — wider
than the vast Atlantic, let him mark how it extends through
twenty parallels of latitude and thirty of longitude, through all
climates and all soUs; let him observe, as he descends frora North
to South, how it successively displays a sample and a rival of all
the great productions and aU the great productive regions of the
globe, — pine forests, like those of Norway ; wheat fields out-
measuring those of Poland ; pastures ampler and fairer than the
shepherds of England and Spain ever saw; cotton, rice, for the
world, though Egypt and India were smitten with instant and
perpetual sterility ; let him reflect that there are limits of a na
tion's territorial extent, which the laws of nature and of raan
do not permit them to transcend, beyond which the warm tides
of the national heart cannot be propelled, or cannot flow back, —
beyond which, unity, identity, nationality, are dissolved and
dissipated ; and then let him bear in raind that our territory is

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 281
already three times larger than England, Spain, France, and
Italy, all put together, — larger than the Roman Erapire in its
zenith ; and he will be prepared to say whether, with or with
out the cost of a war; with or without the violation of trea
ties ; with or without the approval of the raoral judgraents of
the world ; irrespective of aU influence upon his own State, or
region of States, he thinks it well to add to this vast region
another, forty tiraes larger than Massachusetts, — larger than
France, for the purpose of perpetuating slavery, on a soil, cer
tain otherwise, and speedily, to be free. How far wiser, more
innocent, more glorious, to improve what we have ; to fell our
forests ; to construct our railroads ; to reclaim our earth ; to
fit it all up to be the spacious and beautiful abode of one har
monious family of Man !
And, now, Fellow-citizens, if these are the evils of annexa
tion ; and if the election of Mr. Polk will, or probably raay,
eff'ect annexation, and that of Mr. Clay will defeat, or postpone
it indefinitely, — what, I ask, once raore, are the duties of the
opponents of this measure, of all parties ? What are your
moral duties ? If the mischiefs of Mr. Polk's administration
would agree to take any shape but this ; if they were certain
not to go beyond four years of disordered currency ; interrupt
ed improvements ; indiscreet disposition of the lands ; unstable
and insufficient protection of labor — if this were all, — I
would not ask a man — I would not thank a man, to change
or to withhold a vote. I know there are Whigs enough,
Whigs frora their raothers' arms — now and always such,
who, without the stimulus of uncoraproraislng hostility to Tex
as, — without that, — on a calra, habitual estiraate of the general
politics involved, — could turn Mr. Polk back again upon the
convention that discovered hira, and win anew the victory of
1840. But I acknowledge an earnest desire to see " this un
warrantable scherae," — as the New York Deraocrats have
pronounced it, — 'encountered by an opposition approaching to
unaniraity. I should like to see it shamed out of sight, for at
least our day. Why, the wisdom and patriotisra of the better
South disowns it ! See how the old glorious North Carolina
has gone into action, and how she has corae out of it ! Hark
to the thunder that announces the risen and triuraphant Ken
tucky ! Is this a day for New England to be inactive, or to
24*

282 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
be distracted ? Do you need to be told, what I love not to
dwell or touch upon, that if the designs of some of those who
would annex Texas could be accomplished ; if they could suc
ceed in turning Texas to the account which they dreara of; if,
by that aid, they could subvert your industrial policy ; could
retransfer your workshops to Europe ; could prevent the in
dustry of Araerica frora doing the work of Araerica ; could
suspend these diversified eraployraents, which develop, disci
pline, occupy, and reward the universal faculties of this cora
raunity ; which give to every taste and talent the task best
suited to it ; which give occupation to the strong and weak ;
the bright and the dull ; to both sexes and to all ages, and at
all times, — in winter and suramer ; in wet weather and in dry
weather ; by daylight and lamplight ; to all and each, — "a
fair day's wages for a fair day's work ;" — if they could strike
down the giant arm of Labor helpless to his side — if the poli
tics which you are this day in the field to resist could triumph,
— do you not know — that even if the Union were preserved,
New England would be cast into provincial, into parochial in
significance ? aye, that this New England, the New England
that we love ; the New England of our fathers and of history —
that the places which once knew this New England, would
know her no more ? Having a form to live, she would be
dead. Having a form of constitutional hfe, the strong, soaring,
and beautiful spirit would have departed. If the Union were
preserved ; if the great constellation still held on its journey
in the sky, these once jubilant stars of the morning would be
silent and dim.
But I would rather show you a loftier motive than any ira
pulse of local interest, or local aff'ection, or local pride. I tell
you, Fellow-citizens of all parties, here and everywhere, that if
you love the Union as once you did, out of a pure heart, fer
vently ; if neither the small gasconades of nullifiers, nor the
gloomy ravings of fanatics have chilled that sweet, cherished
and hereditary sentiment ; if you yet love to turn away from
the croaker who predicts, the hypocrite who desires, the bully
who threatens, the arithmetician who computes, the traitor who
plots, dissolution of the Union ; if you love, turning from these,
to go and erect and refresh your spirits by pondering the fare-
veil counsels of Washington, by drawing frora that capacious

ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 283
national heart, by retracing that illustrious life, — if you,
whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are, are
for the Union against everybody, for the Union with any
body, for the Union first, last, and always, — then stand by
us, and we will stand by you — this once ! This once ! An
other tirae, on other subjects, we can quarrel, but not now —
not now, when the legions throng up to the very walls of the
city of David, and the engines thunder at its gate. Another
tirae we can sleep on and take our rest, but not now :
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen !

SPEECH ON THE JUDICIAL TENUEE.
DELIVERED IN THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE CONVENTION, JULT 14, 1853.

It is not, ray purpose to enter at large on the discussion of
this iraportant subject. That discussion is exhausted ; and if
it is not, your patience is ; and if not quite so, you have ar
rived, I apprehend, each to his own conclusion. But as I had
the honor to serve on the committee to whom the departraent
of the judiciary was referred, I desire to be indulged in the
stateraent of ray opinions, abstaining frora any attempt elabo
rately to enforce them.
I feel no apprehension that this body is about to recommend
an election of judges by the people. All appearances ; the
votes taken ; the views disclosed in debate ; the demonstrations
of iraportant men here, indicate the contrary. I do not mean
to say that such a proposition has not been strenuously
pressed, and in good faith ; yet, for reasons which I will not
consume my prescribed hour in detailing, there is no danger
of it. Whether merabers are ready for such a thing or not,
they avow, themselves, that they do not think the people are
ready. What I most fear is, that the deliberation may end in limit
ing the tenure of judicial oflSce to a term of years, seven or
ten ; that in the result we shall hear it urged, " as we are
good enough not to stand out for an election by the people,
you ought to be capable of an equal magnaniraity, and not
stand out for the present terra of good behavior ; " and thus
we shall be forced into a coraproraise in favor of periodical and
frequent appointraent, — which shall please everybody a little.
I have the honor to subrait to the convention that neither
change is needed. Both of them, if experience may in the
least degree be relied on, are fraught with evils unnumbered.

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE.
To hazard either, would be, not to realize the boast W^ we
found the capitol, in this behalf, brick, and left it raarble^».^but
contrarywise, to change its marble to brick.
Sir, in this inquiry what mode of judicial appointment, and
what tenure of judicial office, you wUl recommend to the peo
ple, I think that there is but one safe or sensible raode of
proceeding, and that is to ascertain what raode of appointraent,
and what length and condition of tenure, will be most certain,
in the long run, guiding ourselves by the lights of all the ex
perience, and all the observation to which we can resort, to
bring and keep the best judge upon the bench — the best judge
for the ends of his great office. There is no other test. That
an election by the people, once a year, or an appointment by
the governor once a year, or once in five, or seven, or ten
years, will operate to give to an ambitious young lawyer (I
refer to no one in this body) a better chance to be made a
judge — as the wheel turns round — is no recoraraendation,
and is nothing to the purpose. That this consideration has
changed, or fraraed, the constitutions of some of the States
whose exaraple has been pressed on us, I have no doubt. Let
it have no weight here. We, at least, hold that offices, and
most of all the judicial office, are not made for incurabents or
candidates, but for the people ; to establish justice ; to guaran
tee security araong thera. Let us constitute the office in ref
erence to its ends.
I go for that system, if I can find it or help find it, which
gives me the highest degree of assurance, taking man as he is,
at his strongest and at his weakest, and in the average of the
lot of huraanity, that there shall be the best judge on every
bench of justice in the coraraonwealth, through its successive
generations. That we raay safely adopt such a systera ; that
is to say, that we may do so and yet not abridge or irapair or
endanger our popular polity in the least particular ; that we
may secure the best possible judge, and yet retain, aye, help
to perpetuate and keep in health, the utraost aflSluence of liberty
with which civil life can be raaintained, I will atterapt to show
hereafter. For the present, I ask, how shall we get and keep
the best judge for the work of the judge ?
Well, Sir, before I can go to that inquiry, I raust pause at
the outset, and, inverting a little what has been the order of

286 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
investigation here, ask first, who and what is such a judge;
who is that best judge ? what is he? how shall we know him?
On this point it is impossible that there should be the slight-
test difference of opinion araong us. On some things we
diifer. Some of you are dissatisfied with this decision or with
that. Sorae of you take exception to this judge or to that.
Sorae of you, more loftily, hold that one way of appointing to
the office, or one way of limiting the tenure, is a little raore or
less raonarchical, or a little raore or less deraocratic than an
other — and so we differ ; but I do not believe there is a
single member of the convention who will not agree with me
in the description I am about to give ofthe good judge; who
will not agree with rae that the systera which is surest to put
and to keep hira on the bench, is the true system for Massa
chusetts. In the first place, he should be profoundly learned in all the
learning of the law, and he must know how to use that learn
ing. Will any one stand up here to deny this ? In tbis day,
boastful, glorious for its advancing popular, professional, scien
tific, and all education, wUl any one disgrace himself by doubt
ing the necessity of deep and continued studies, and various
and thorough attainments, to the bench ? He is to know, not
merely the law which you make, and the legislature makes,
not constitutional and statute law alone, but that other ampler,
that boundless jurisprudence, the common law, which the suc
cessive generations of the State have sUently built up ; that
old code of freedom which we brought with us in the May
flower and Arabella, but which in the progress of centuries we
have ameliorated and enriched, and adapted wisely to the ne
cessities of a busy, prosperous, and wealthy coraraunity, —
that he must know. And where to find it? In voluraes
which you raust count by hundreds, by thousands; filling libra
ries; exacting long labors, — the labors of a life-tirae, abstracted
frora business, from politics ; but assisted by taking part in an
active judicial administration ; such labors as produced the
wisdora and won the farae of Parsons and Marshall, and
Kent and Story, and Holt and Mansfield. If your system of
appointment and tenure does not present a raotive, a help for
such labors and such learning ; if it discourages, if it dis
parages them, in so far it is a faUure.

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 287
In the next place, he raust be a man, not merely upright, not
merely honest and well-intentioned, — this of course, — but a
man who will not respect persons in judgment. And does not
every one here agree to this also ? Dismissing, for a moraent,
all theories about the mode of appointing him, or the tirae for '
which he shall hold office, sure I am, we all deraand, tbat as
far as huraan virtue, assisted by the best contrivances of huraan
wisdora, can attain to it, he shall not respect persons in judg
ment. He shall know nothing about the parties, everything
about the case. He shall do everything for justice ; nothing for
himself ; nothing for his friend ; nothing for his patron ; noth
ing for his sovereign. If on one side is the executive power
and the legislature and the people, — the sources of his honors,
the givers of his daily bread, — and on the other an individual
nameless and odious, his eye is to see neither, great nor sraall;
attending only to the " trepidations of the balance." If a law
is passed by a unanimous legislature, clamored for by the gen
eral voice of the public, and a cause is before him on it, in }
which the whole community is on one side and an individual
nameless or odious on the other, and he believes it to be
against the Constitution, he raust so declare it, — or there is no
judge. If Athens coraes there to deraand that the cup of
hemlock be put to the lips of the wisest of men; and he be- 1
lieves that he has not corrupted the youth, nor omitted to wor- ':
ship the gods of the city, nor introduced new divinities of his
own, he must deliver him, although the thunder light on the,
unterrified brow.
This, Sir, expresses, by very general illustration, what I
mean when I say I would have him no respecter of persons in
judgment. How we are to find, and to keep such an one ; by
what motives ; by what helps ; whether by popular and fre
quent election, or by executive designation, and permanence
dependent on good conduct in office alone — r we are hereafter
to inquire ; but that we raust have him, — that his price is
above rubies, — that he is necessary, if justice, if security, if
right are necessary for man, — all of you, from the East or
West, are, I am sure, unanimous.
And finally, he must possess the perfect confidence of the
coraraunity, that he bear not the sword in vain. To be hon
est, to be no respecter of persons, is not yet enough. He must

288 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
be believed such. I should be glad so far to indulge an old
fashioned and cherished professional sentiraent as to say, that
I would have soraething of venerable and illustrious attach to
his character and function, in the judgraent and feelings ofthe
comraonwealth. But if this should be thought a little above,
or behind the tirae, I do not fear that I subject rayself to the
ridicule of any one, when I claira that he be a raan towards
whora the love and trust and affectionate admiration of the
people should flow ; not a raan perching for a winter and sum
mer in our court-houses, and then gone forever ; but one to
whose benevolent face, and bland and dignified manners, and
firm adrainistration of the whole learning of the law, we be
corae accustoraed ; whom our eyes anxiously, not in vain, ex
plore when we enter the temple of justice; towards whora our
attachraent and trust grow even with the growth of his own
eminent reputation. I would have him one who might look
back frora the venerable last years of Mansfield, or Marshall,
and recall such testimonies as these to the great and good
Judge : —
" The young men saw me, and hid themselves ; and the
aged arose and stood up.
" The princes refrained talking, tod laid their hand upon
their mouth.
" When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the
eye saw rae, it gave witness to rae.
" Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless,
and him that had none to help him.
" The blessing of him that was ready to perish carae upon
me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.
" I put on righteousness and it clothed me. My judgraent
was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet
was I to the lame.
" I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew
not, I searched out.
" And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil
out of his teeth."
Give to the coraraunity such a judge, and I care little who
makes the rest of the constitution, or what party administers
it. It wUl be a free government, I know. Let us repose,
secure, under the shade of a learned, impartial, and trusted
magistracy, and we need no more.

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 289
And now, what system of promotion to office and what ten
ure of office is surest to produce such a judge ? Is it execu
tive appointment during good behavior, with liabUity, how
ever, to be impeached for good cause, and to be removed by
address of the legislature ? or is it election by the people, or
appointraent by the executive for a liraited term of years ?
To every systera there are objections. To every system
there are sound, or there are specious objections ; objections of
theory ; objections of fact. Any man's ability is equal to
finding, and exaggerating thera. What is deraanded of us is
to corapare the good and evil of the different systeras, and se
lect the best. Compare them by the test which I have pro
posed. See which will most certainly give you the judge you
need, and adopt that. It may be cavilled at ; even as freedom,
as religion, as wholesome restraint, as liberty of speech, as
the institution and the rights of property, may be cavilled at;
but in its fruits, in its product, judged by a long succession of
seasons, is its justification and its glory.
Applying then. Sir, this test, I think the existing system is,
out of all comparison, the best one. At the hazard of repeat
ing and weakening the views presented yesterday in the im
pressive and adrairable address of ray friend for Manchester,
[Mr. Dana,] and in the instructive and able arguments of the
two gentlemen, [Mr, Greenleaf and Mr, Parker,] whose estab
lished professional reputations give to them such just weight
with you, I beg to submit, briefly, why I think so.
In the first place, then, it seeras to rae raost clear that the
weight of sound general opinion and of the evidence of a trust
worthy experience vastly preponderates in favor of it. How
the systera of popular elections, or of short terras, is actually
working now in any one of the States which have recently in
troduced it ; how, still raore, it is likely to work there after the
influences ofthe earlier system, the judges which it bred, the
habits which it forraed, the bars which it trained, have passed
away, there is no proof before this Convention deserving one
moraent's notice. We do not know what is the predorainant
conviction on this subject, to-day, of those fittest to judge, in
any one State. We do know that they cannot yet possibly
pronounce on the matter, however close or sagacious their ob
servation. What they have not yet seen, they cannot yet tell.
VOL. II. 25

^90 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
Certainly the result of all that I have been able to gather is a
general and strong opinion against the new system ; and in
favor of a return, if to return were possible, to that which we
are yet proud and privileged to call our own. But the evi
dence is too loose for the slightest consideration. My friend
for Manchester read letters yesterday from persons of high
character, as he assured us, in New York, deploring the work
ing of her nevv systera ; and I have no doubt that the witnesses
are respectable, and the opinions perfectly sound. But other
gentleraen guess that very different letters raight be obtained,
by applying to the right quarters ; and the gentleraan from
New Bedford, [Mr. French,] is quite confident that the people
of that great State — the two or three millions — are in favor
of the change, because one, if not two, or even three individu
als have personally told hira so. And, therefore, I say, we
have not here now so much evidence of the practical working
of their recent systeras anywhere, even as far as it has gone,
that any honest lawyer would advise his client to risk a hun
dred dollars on it.
But, on the other hand, are there not raost weighty opin
ions ; is there not the testimony of the widest, and longest,
and most satisfactory experience, that executive appointment
for good behavior yields the best judge ?
What is British opinion and British experience to the point ?
On the question what tenure of office promises the best judge^
that opinion and that experience raay well be adverted to.
Whether a particular raode, or a particular tenure, is conso
nant to the republican polity of governraent, we raust settle for
ourselves. That is another question. Monarchical and aris
tocratical principles we will not go for to England or else
where, nor buy even learning, irapartiality, and titles to trust,
at the cost of an anti-republican systera. But to know how
it practically operates to have the judge dependent on the
power that appoints hira ; dependent for his continuance in
office ; dependent for his restoration to it ; dependent on any
thing or on anybody but his own official good behavior, and
that general responsibility to the legislature and public opinion,
t' that spirit of observation and censure which modifies and
controls the whole government" — we may very well consult
British or any other experience. The establishment of the

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 291
tenure of good behavior was a triuraph of liberty. It was a
triuraph of popular liberty against the crown. Before the
revolution of 1688, or certainly during the worst years of the
Stuart dynasty, the judge held office at the pleasure of the
king who appointed hira. What was the consequence ? He
was the tool of the hand that made and unmade him. Scroggs
and Jeff'reys were but representatives and exemplifications of a
system. A whole bench sometimes was packed for the en
forcement of sorae new and raore flagrant royal, usurpation.
Outraged and in raourning by judicial subserviency and judi
cial murder, England discerned at the revolution that her lib
erty was incompletely recovered and imperfectly guarded,
unless she had judges by whom the boast that an English
man's house is his castle, should be elevated from a phrase to
a fact ; from an abstract right to a secure enjoyraent, so that,
although that house were " a cottage with a thatched roof
which all the winds raight enter, the king could not." To
that end the Act of Settleraent raade the tenure of good be
havior a part of the British Constitution ; and a later amend
ment kept the judicial coraraission alive, as my friend for
Manchester yesterday reminded us, notwithstanding the deraise
of the sovereign, and perfected the system. Sir, the origin
of the tenure of good behavior — marking thus an epoch in
the progress of liberty ; a victory, so to say, of individuality,
of private right, of the household hearth of the cottager, of
the " swink'd hedger," over the crown, — and still more, its
practical workings in the judicial character and function, may
well entitle it to thoughtful treatraent. Compare the series of
British judges since 1688 with that before, and draw your
own conclusions. Not that all this iraproveraent, in irapartiaUty,
in character, in titles to confidence and affection is due to the
change of tenure ; but the soundest historians of that Consti
tution recognize that that is one eleraent of transcendent ira
portance. With its introduction she began to have a govern
ment of laws and not of raen.
I come to other testiraony, other opinions — the lights of a
different experience. There is a certain transaction and docu
ment called the Federal Constitution. Consult that. In
1787, that Convention, — assisted by the thoughts and dis
cussions of the five years of peace preceding it, upon the sub-

292 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
ject of national governraent, — to be constructed on the repub
lican form of polity — into which were gathered all, or almost
all, of our great raen, in our age of greatness ; raen of deep
studies, ripe wisdora, Ulustrious reputation, a high spirit of
liberty; that Convention, upon a careful survey of the insti
tutions of the States of Araerica, and of those of other coun
tries, and tiraes past and present; upon, I think we cannot
doubt, a profound appreciation of the true functions of a judi
cial departraent ; of the qualities of a good judge ; of the
best systera of appointraent and tenure to obtain thera — of
the true nature of republican government — and how far, con
sistently with all its characteristic principles and airas, the
people may well determine to appoint to office indirectly,
rather than directly, and for good behavior, rather than for a
limited terra, when the great ends of the stability of justice,
and the security of private right prescribe it — incorporated
into the great organic law of the Union the principle that
judges shall be appointed by the executive power, to hold their
office during good behavior.
The gentleraan frora Lowell [Mr. Butler] last evening ob
served, referring, I believe, to the time when our Constitution
was adopted, that it was long before the age of the steamboat
and railroad and magnetic telegraph. It is true ; but do we
know better than they knew, the nature of man ; the nature
of the judicial man ; what he ought to be to discharge his spe
cific functions aright; how raotives, raotives of ambition, of
fear, of true fame, of high principle, aff'ect him ; whether de
pendence on another power is favorable to independence of the
wishes and the will of that other power ? Do we know more
of republican governraent and true liberty, and the reconcili
ations of personal security under due course of law with the
loftiest spirit of freedora, than they ? Has the advanceraent
of this kind of knowledge quite kept pace with that of the
science of the raaterial world ?
I wish, Sir, the tirae of the Convention would allow rae to
read entire that paper of " The Federalist," the seventy-eighth I
believe, in which the principle of the independence of the
judiciary is vindicated, and executive appointraent, during good
behavior, as the means of attaining such independence, is vin
dicated also. But read it for yourselves. Hear HamUton

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 293
and Madison and Jay ; for we know from all sources that on
this subject that paper expressed the opinions of all, — on the
independence of the judiciary, and the raeans of securing it, —
a vast subject adequately Ulustrated by the highest huraan in
telligence and learning and purity of principle and of public
life. Sir, it is quite a striking rerainiscence, that this very paper
of " The Federalist," which thus raaintains the independence of
the judiciary, is among the earliest, perhaps the earliest, enun
ciation and vindication, in this country, of that great truth,
that in the American politics, the written Constitution — which
is the record of the popular wiU — • is above the law which is
the will of the legislature merely ; that if the two are in con
flict, the law raust yield aud the Constitution raust rule ; and
that to deterraine whether such a conflict exists, and if so, to
pronounce the law invalid, is, frora the nature of the judicial
office, the plain duty of the judge. In that paper this funda
mental proposition of our system was first presented, or first
elaborately presented, to the American mind ; its solidity and
its value were established by unanswerable reasoning ; and the
conclusion that a bench, which was charged with a trust so
vast and so delicate, should be as independent as the lot of
humanity would adrait — of the legislature, of the executive,
of the teraporary popular majority, whose will it might be re
quired thus to subject to the higher will of the Constitution,
was deduced by a raoral deraonstration. Beware, Sir, lest
truths so indissolubly connected — presented together, at first;
— adopted together — should die together. Consider whether,
when the judge ceases to be independent, the Constitution wUl
not cease to be suprerae. If the Constitution does not raain
tain the judge against the legislature, and the executive, will
the judge raaintain the Constitution against the legislature and
the executive ?
What the working of this principle in the national govern
ment has been, practically, there is no need to reraind you.
Recall the series of naraes, the dead and liviug, who have
illustrated that Bench ; advert to the prolonged terras of ser
vice of which the country has had the enjoyraent ; trace the
growth of the national jurisprudence ; corapare it with any
other production of Araerican mind or liberty ; then trace the
25*

294 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
progress and tendencies of political opinions, and say if it has
not given us stability and security, and yet left our liberties
unabridged. I find a third arguraent for the principle of executive
appointment during good behavior, in this : that it is the
existing system of Massachusetts, and it has operated with
adrairable success. It is not that it exists ; it is that it works
well. Does it not? Sir, is it for rae, or any man, any raera
ber of the profession of the law raost of all, to rise here, and
now, and because our feelings may have sometiraes been ruffied
or wounded by a passage with the Bench ; because we have
been dissatisfied by a ruling or a verdict ; because our own
over-wrought brain raay have caused us, in sorae raoraent, to
becorae forgetful of ourselves ; or because a judge may have
misunderstood us, and done us an unintentional injury — is it
for us to disclaim the praise, so grateful, so just, which the
two eminent gentlemen, one of them forraerly of New-Harap-
shire [Mr. Parker], one of them formerly of Maine [Mr.
Greenleaf], speaking without the partiality of native sons, and
from observations made by thera frora a point of view out
side of us, and distant frora us — have bestowed on our Bench
and our law ? Theirs are lips from which even flattery were
sweet ; but when they concur in reminding you with what
respect the decisions of this court are consulted by other courts
of learning and character ; how far their reputation has ex
tended ; how familiar is the profession of law with the great
names of our judicial history ; how important a contribution to
American jurisprudence, and even to the general products of
American thought, our local code composes — do we not be
lieve that they utter their personal convictions, and that the
high compliment is as deserved as it is pleasing ?
If it has worked well, it is good. Do men gather grapes
of thorns, or figs of thistles ? If it has continued to us a long
succession of men, deeply learned, wholly impartial, deserving,
and clothed with the trust, love, and affectionate admiration of
all parties of the community, does it not afford a reasonable
ground of inference that there is something in such a mode of
appointraent, and in such a tenure, intrinsically, philosophi
cally adapted to insure such a result ?
Sorae criticism has been made on the practical administra-

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 295
tion of our law, which deserves a passing notice. It requires
the less because it has already been replied to.
The gentleraan from New-Bedford [Mr. French] told a
story of some one, as I understood him, who was about to
lose, or had lost, or dared not sue, a note of a hundred dollars,
because it would cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to col
lect it. A very sensible explanation was suggested by the
gentleman from Cambridge [Mr. Parker] just now ; and I
will venture to advise the gentleman from New-Bedford in
addition, the very first time he sees his friend, to recoraraend
to hira to change his lawyer as quick as he possibly can. As
a reason for a change of the Constitution, and the tenure of
the judicial office, it seeras to rae not particularly cogent.
The same gentleman reraerabers that your Suprerae Court
decided that the fugitive-slave law is constitutional ; and what
makes it the raore provoking is, he knows the decision was
wrong. Well, Sir, so said the gentleman frora Manchester
[Mr. Dana.] His sentiraents concerning that law and its
kindred topics do not differ, I suppose, greatly from those of
the meraber frora New-Bedford ; but what did he add ? "I
thank God," he said, " that I have the consolation of knowing
the decision was made by men as irapartial as the lot of hu
manity would admit ; and that if judges were elected by the
people of Massachusetts it would hold out no hope of a differ
ent decision." He sees in this, therefore, no cause for altering
our judicial system on any view of the decision ; and I believe
— though I have never heard him say or suggest such a thing
— •' that my friend's learning and self-distrust — that " that
learned and modest ignorance " which Gibbon recognizes as the
last and ripest result of the profound knowledge of a large
mind — will lead him to agree with me, that it is barely pos
sible, considering how strongly that law excites the feelings,
and thus tends to disturb the judgment, considering the vast
weight of judicial opinion, and of the opinions of public per
sons in its favor ; recalling the first law on that subject, and
the decision in Prigg and Pennsylvania — and who gave the
opinion of that Court in that case — that it is just barely pos
sible that the gentleman from New-Bedford does not certainly
know that the decision was wrong. That he thinks it so, and
would lay his Ufe down upon it, the energy and the sentiments

296 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of his speech sufficiently indicate. My difficulty, like my
friend's for Manchester, is to gather out of all this indig
nation the least particle of cause for a change of the judicial
tenure. The gentleman from Lowell, [Mr. Butler,] animadverted
soraewhat, last evening, on the delays attending the publication
of the reports of decisions. I had made some inquiry con
cerning the facts ; but have been completely anticipated in all
I would have said by the gentleman from Cambridge [Mr.
Parker]. To rae his explanation seems perfectly satisfactory;
and in no view of such a question would the good sense of the
gentleman frora Lowell, I think, deera it a reason for so vast
an innovation as this, on the existing and ancient systera.
To another portion of that learned gentleman's speech, I
have a word to say, in all frankness and all candor. Placing
his hand on his heart, he appealed, with great emphasis of
manner, to the honor of the bar, as represented in this Con
vention, whether we had not heard complaints of particular
acts of some of our judges? Sir, that appeal is entitled to a
frank and honorable response. I have known and loved many;
many raen; raany woraen — ^of the living and the dead — of
the purest and noblest of earth or skies — but I never knew
one — I never heard of one — if conspicuous enough to at
tract a considerable observation, whora the breath of calumny,
or of sarcasm, always wholly spared. Did the learned gentle
raan ever know one ? " Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calurany."
And does he expect that in a profession like ours ; over
tasked; disappointed in the results of causes; eager for victory;
mortified by unexpected defeat ; raisunderstanding or failing to
appreciate the evidence ; the court sometimes itself jaded and
mistaken — that we shall not often hear, and often say, hasty
and harsh things of a judge? I have heard such of every
judge I ever saw — however revered in his general character.
Did Mansfield escape? Did Marshall? Did Parsons? Did
Story ? What does it come to as an arguraent against the par
ticular judge; still raore as an arguraent against a judicial
systera ? Are we to go on altering the raode of appointraent,
and the tenure, till you get a corps of judges, against no one
of which, no one ever hears anybody say anything ?

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE.

Wi

But, Sir, I am to answer the learned gentleman's appeal a
little farther ; and I say upon my honor, that I believe it the
general opinion of the bar to-day, its general opinion ever
since I entered the profession, that our system of appointraent
and tenure, has operated perfectly well ; that the benches and
courts have been, and are, learned, impartial, entitled to trust ;
and that there is not one meraber of either who, taking his
judicial character and life as a whole is not erainently, or ad
equately, qualified for his place.
Turn, now, frora the existing system to the substitute which
is offered ; and see, if you can, how that will work.
It is not enough to take little objections to that system,
in its general working so satisfactory. He who would change
it is bound to show that what he proposes in place of it will do
better. To this, I say, it is all a sheer conjectural speculation,
yet we see and know enough to warrant the most gloomy ap
prehensions. Consider first, for a moment, the motion imraediately pend
ing ; which proposes the election of judges by the people, I
said in the outset, I have no fear of your sustaining it ; but
for the developraent of a full view of the general subject, it
wiU justify sorae attention.
Gentleraen begin by asking if we are afraid to trust the
people. Well, Sir, that is a very cunning question ; very cun
ning indeed. Answer it as you will, they think they have
you. If you answer. Yes, — that you are afraid to trust the
people, — then tbey cry out. He blaspheraeth. If you answer.
No, — that you are not afraid to trust them, — then they reply.
Why not perrait thera to choose their judges ?
Sir, this dilemma creates no difiiculty, I raight evade it
by saying that however ready and however habituated to trust
the people, it does not follow that we should desert a systera
which has succeeded eminently, to see if another will not
succeed as well. If the indirect appointment by the people ;
appointraent through the governor whom they choose, has sup
plied a succession of exceUent judges, why should I trouble
thera with the direct appointraent — however well they raight
conduct it — which they have not solicited ; which they have
not expected ; about which you dared not open your raouths
during the discussion concerning the call of a Convention ; in

298 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
regard to which you gave thera — it is raore correct to say —
every reason to believe you should raake no change whatever ?
Get a Convention by a pledge to the people not to make judges
elective — and then teU us we shall make thera elective, on
pain of being denounced afraid to trust the people ! Will such
flattery be accepted in atoneraent for such deception ?
But I prefer meeting this dilemraa in another way. It is a
question certainly of sorae nicety to determine what offices the
public good prescribes should be filled by a direct election of
the people ; and what should be filled by the appointraent of
others, as the governor and council, chosen by the people. On
the best reflection I have been able to give it, this seeras to me
a safe general proposition. If the nature of the office be such,
the qualifications which it demands, and the stage on which
they are to be displayed be such, that the people can judge of
those qualifications as well as their agents ; and if, still
farther, the nature of the office be such that the tremendous
ordeal of a severely contested popular election will not in any
degree do it injury, — will not deter learned men, if the office
needs learning, frora aspiring to it ; will not tend to raake the
successful candidate a respecter of persons, if the office requires
that he should not be ; wUl not tend to weaken the confidence
and trust, and affectionate adrairation of the coraraunity towards
hira, if the office requires that such be the sentiraents with
which he should be regarded, — then the people should choose
by direct election. If, on the other hand, from the kind of
qualifications demanded, and the place where their display is to
be made, an agent of the people, chosen by them for that pur
pose, can judge of the qualifications better than they can ; or
if from its nature it deraands learning, and the terrors of a
party canvass drive learning frora the field; or if it demands-
impartiality and general confidence, and the successful candi
date of a party is less likely to possess either, — then the in
direct appointment by the people, that is, appointment by their
agent, is wisest.
Let rae illustrate this test by reference to sorae proceedings
of the Convention. You have already raade certain offices
elective, which heretofore were filled by executive appointment
— such as those of sheriffs ; the attorney-general ; district-
attorneys, and others.

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 299
Now, within the test just indicated, I do not know why
these offices may not be filled by election, if anybody has a
fancy for it. Take the case of the sheriff', for instance. He
requires energy, courtesy, proraptness, — qualities pertaining
to character rather, and raanner, displayed, so to speak, in the
open air ; palpable, capable of easy and public appreciation.
Besides, his is an office which the freedora and violence of pop
ular elections do not greatly harm. There are certain specific
duties to do for a compensation, and if these are well done, it
does not much signify what a minority or what anybody thinks
of hira.
Totally unlike this in all things is the case of the judge. In
the first place, the qualities which fit him for the office are quite
peculiar ; less palpable, less salient, so to speak, less easily and
accurately appreciated by cursory and general notice. They
are an uncomraon, recondite, and difficult learning, and they
are a certain power and turn of mind and cast of character,
which, until they come actually, and for a considerable length
of time, and in raany varieties of circurastances, to be displayed
upon the bench itself, may be almost unremarked but by near
and professional observers. What the public chiefly see is the
effective advocate ; hira their first thought would be perhaps to
make their candidate for judge ; yet experience has proved that
the best advocate is not necessarily the best judge, — that the
two functions exact diverse qualifications, and that brilliant suc
cess in one holds out no certain proraise of success in the other.
A popular election would have been very likely to raise Ers
kine or Curran to the bench, if they had selected the situation ;
but it seeras quite certain that one failed as Lord Chancellor,
and the other as Master of the Rolls, and pretty reraarkably,
too, considering their extraordinary abilities in the conduct of
causes of fact at the bar. I have supposed that Lord Abin-
ger, who, as Mr. Scarlett, won raore verdicts than any raan in
England, did not conspicuously succeed in the exchequer ; and
that, on the other hand. Lord Tenterden, to narae no raore,
raised to the bench frora no practice at all, or none of which
the public had seen anything, became, by the fortunate posses
sion of the specific judicial nature, among the raost erainent
who have presided on it. The truth is, the selection of a judge
is a little like that of a professor of the higher mathematics or

300 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of intellectual philosophy. Intimate knowledge of the candidate
wUl detect the presence or the absence of the specialty de
manded ; the kind of knowledge of him which the coraraunity
may be expected to gain, will not. On this point I subrait to
the honor and candor of the bar in this body an illustration
which is worth considering. It often happens that our clients
propose, or that we propose, to associate other counsel with us
to aid in presenting the cause to the jury. In such cases we
expect and desire thera to select their raan, and alraost always
we think the selection a good one. But it soraetimes happens,
i too, that it is decided to submit the cause to a lawyer as a ref-
, eree. And then do we expect or wish our client to select the
\ referee ? Certainly never. That we know we can do better
ithan he, because better than he we appreciate the legal aspects
of the case, and the kind of mind which is required to raeet
thera ; and we should betray the client, sacrifice the cause, and
sharaefuUy neglect a clear duty, if we did not insist on his per
mitting us, for the protection of his interests intrusted to our
care, to appoint his judge. Always he also desires us for his
sake to do it. And now, that which we would not advise the
single client to do for himself, shall we advise the whole body
of our clients to do for theraselves ?
But this is, by no raeans, the principal objection to raaking
this kind of office elective. Consider, beyond all this, how the
office itself is to be aff'ected ; its dignity ; its just weight ; the
kind of raen who will fill it ; their learning ; their firraness ;
their hold on the general confidence — how will these be af
fected? Who will raake the judge ? At present he is ap
pointed by a governor, his council concurring, in whom a
majority of tbe whole people have expressed their trust by
electing him, and to whom the minority have no objection but
his politics ; acting under a direct personal responsibUity to
public opinion ; possessing the best conceivable means to as
certain, if he does not know, by inquiry at the right sources,
who does, and who does not possess the character of mind
and qualities demanded. By such a govemor he is appoint
ed ; and then afterward he is perfectly independent of him.
And how weU the appointing power in aU hands has done its
work, let our judicial annals tell. But, unjder an elective sys
tem, who will make the judge ? The young lawyer leaders

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. gOl
in the caucus of the prevaUing party will raake him. Will
they not ? Each party is to norainate for the office, if the peo
ple are to vote for it, is it not ? You know it raust be so.
How will they norainate ? In the great State caucus, of course,
as they norainate for governor. On whora will the judicial
nominations be devdlved ? On the professional merabers of
the caucus, of course. Who will they be ? Young, arabltious
lawyers, very able, possibly, and very deserving ; but not se
lected by a raajority of the whole people, nor by a raajority,
perhaps, of their own towns, to do anything so important and
responsible as to make a judge, — these will nominate hira.
The party, unless the case is very scandalous indeed, will sus
tain its regular norainations ; and thus practically a handful of
caucus leaders, under this systera, will appoint the judges of
Massachusetts. This is bad enough ; because we ought to
know who it is that elevates raen to an office so important —
we ought to have some control over the nominating power —
and of these caucus leaders we know nothing ; and because,
also, they will have motives to nominate altogether irrespec
tive of the fitness of the norainee for the place, on which no
governor of this Comraonwealth, of any party, has ever acted.
This is bad enough. But it is not all, nor the worst. Trace
it onwards. So norainated, the candidate is put through a
violent election ; abused by the press, abused on the stump,
charged ten thousand times over with being very little of a
lawyer, and a good deal of a knave or boor ; and after being
tossed on this kind of blanket for sorae uneasy months, is
chosen by a raajority of ten votes out of a hundred thousand,
and coraes into court, breathless, terrified, with perspiration in
drops on his brow, wondering how he ever got there, to take
his seat on the bench. And in the very first cause he tries, he
sees on one side the counsel who procured his noraination in
caucus, and has defended him by pen and tongue before the
people, and on the other, the most prominent of his assailants ;
one who has been denying his talents, denying his learning,
denpng his integrity, denying him every judicial quality, and
every quality that may define a good man, before half the
counties in the State. Is not this about as infallible a recipe
as you could wish to make a judge a respecter of persons ?
WUl it not inevitably load him with the suspicion of partiality,
VOL. n. 26

S02 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
whether he deserves it or not ? Is it happily calculated alto
gether to fix on him the love, trust, and affectionate admiration
of the general community with which you agree he ought to
be clothed, as with a robe, or he fills his great office in vain ?
Who does not shrink from such temptation to be partial ? Who
does not shrink from the suspicion of being thought so ? What
studious and learned man, of a true self-respect, fitted the most
preeminently for the magistracy by these very qualities aud
tastes, would subject himself to an ordeal so coarse, and so
inappropriate, for the chance of getting to a position where no
human purity or ability could assure him a trial by his merits ?
But you will not make judges elective. What is to be
feared is, that instead of attempting a larger mischief, in which
you must fail, you will attempt a sraaller, in which you raay
succeed. You will not change the system which has worked
so well, very much, you say, but you will change it some ; and
therefore you will continue to appoint by the governor. But
instead of appointing during good behavior, subject to impeach
ment, and subject to removal by the legislature, you wUl appoint
him for a terra of years — five years, seven years, ten years.
Well, Sir, without repeating that no reason for any change
is shown, and that no raanner of evidence has been produced
to prove that this project of executive appointraent, for limited
terras, has ever succeeded anywhere — pretty iraportant con
siderations for thoughtful persons, likely to weigh much with
the people — there are two objections to this system, which
ought, in my judgment, to put it out of every head. And in
the first place, it will assuredly operate to keep the ablest men
from the bench. You all agree that you would have there the
ablest man whom three thousand dollars or twenty-one hun
dred dollars per annura, will coraraand. The problem is, one
part of the problem is, how shall we get the best judge for
that money ?
And now, if my opinion is worth anything, I desire to ex
press it with all possible confidence, that this change of tenure
will infaUibly reduce the rate of men whom you wiU have on
the bench. Not every one, in aU respects equal to it, can
afford it now. It has been said, and is notorious, that it is
offered and rejected. The consideration of its permanence is
the decisive one in its favor, whoever accepts it. The salary is

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 303
inadequate, but if it is certain, certain as good judicial behavior
— it ought not to be more so — it may be thought enough.
Deprive it of that moral makeweight, and it is nothing. Why
should a lawyer, accumulating, or living, by his practice, look
at a judgeship of ten years ? What does he see and fear ? At
the end of that time he is to descend frora the bench, a raan
forty-five or fifty, or sixty years of age, without a dollar, or
certainly requiring sorae means of increasing his income.
Every old client is lost by tbis time, and he is to begin life as
he began it twenty or thirty years before. Not quite so, even.
Then he was young, energetic, and sanguine. He is older
now, and is less disposed to the contentious efforts of the law.
More than that, he is less equal to them for another reason
than the want of youth. If he has, during the full term of ten
years, been good for anything ; if he has been " a judge,
altogether a judge, and nothing but a judge," then his whole
intellectual character and habits will have undergone a change,
itself incapable of change. He will have grown out of the
lawyer into the magistrate. He will have put off the gown of
the bar, and have assumed the raore graceful and reverend
ermine ofthe bench. The mental habits, the mental faults of
the advocate, the faults ascribed by satire to the advocate, the
faults or habits of his character, the zeal, the constant energy
bestowed on all causes alike ; the tendencies, and the power to
aggravate and intensify one side of a thesis, and forget or al
low inadequate importance to the other — these, if he has been
a good judge, or tried his best to be a good judge for ten
years, he has lost, he has conquered, and has acquired in their
place that calmer and that fairer capacity to see the thing, fact,
or law, just as it is. Thus changed, it wUl be painful to at
tempt to recover the advocate again ; it will be impracticable,
if it is atterapted. To regain business, he raust find new cli
ents ; to find or keep thera, he raust make hiraself over again.
Accordingly, how rare are the cases where any man above the
age of forty, after having served ten years on the bench, seek
ing to cultivate judicial habits, and win a true judicial fame, has
returned to a full business at the bar. I never heard of one.
Such a retired judge may act as a referee. He raay engage
soraewhat in charaber practice, as it is called, though the result
of all my observation has been, that unless he can attend his

304 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
opinions through court ; can there explain and defend thera;
unless he can keep his hand so much in that he feels and knows
at all times which way the judicial mind is tending on the
open questions of the law — his charaber practice holds out a
pretty slender proraise for the decline of a life unprovided for.
He who would be a lawyer, must unite the study of the books
and the daily practice of the courts, or his very learning will
lead him astray.
I have been amused at the excellent reasons given to show
why an able man, at the head of the bar, in full practice, forty
years of age, a growing family and no property, should just as
soon accept a judgeship for ten years as during good behavior.
Some say a judge never lives but ten years on the bench — or
thirteen at the outside — anyhow. They show statistics for
it. They propose, therefore, to go to such a raan and tender
hira the situation. He wUl inconsiderately answer that he
should like the bench ; thinks he could do something for the
law ; should rejoice to give his life to it ; but that the prospect
of coraing off at fifty, and going back to begin battling it again
/with " these younger strengths," is too dreary, and he raust
[decline. "Bless, you," say the gentlemen, "don't trouble
yourself about that, if that is all. You can't live but thirteen
years, the best way you can fix it. Here is the secretary's
report — with a printed list as long as a Harvard College cata
logue — putting that out of all question ! " Do you think this
will persuade hira ? Does he expect to die in ten years ? Who
does so ? Did the naraes on these statistics ?
Others guess that the ten-years judge will be reappointed, if
he behaves well. But unless he is a very weak man indeed,
will he rely on that ? Who will assure it to him ? Does he
not know enough of life to know how easy it will be, after he
has served the State, the law, his conscience and his God for
the stipulated term ; after the performance of his duty has
raade this ambitious young lawyer or that powerful client
his enemy for life ; after having thus stood in the way of a
greedy corapetitor too long — how easy it wUl be to bring in
fluences to bear on a new governor, just corae in at the head of
a flushed and eager party, to allow the old judge's commission
to expire, and appoint the right sort of a man in his place ?
Does he not know how easy it will be to say, " Yes, he is a

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 305
good judge enough, but no better than a dozen others who
have just put you in power; there are advantages in seating a
raan on the bench who is fresh frora the bar ; there is no injus
tice to the incurabent — didn't he know that he ran this risk ? "
Too well he knows it. Sir, to be tickled by the chance of " finding
the doom of raan reversed for hira," and he will reject the offer.
Herein is great and certain evil. How you can disregard
it — how you can fail to appreciate what an obvious piece of
good econoray it is ; economy worthy of statesmen — -- binding
on your conscience ; to so construct your system as to gain for
the bench the best man whom three thousand dollars per an
nura can be made to coraraand, passes all coraprehension.
Surely you will not reply that there " will be enough others to
take it." If the tendency of what you propose is appreciably
to lessen the chances of obtaining the best, is it any excuse to
say that fools will rush in where others will not tread ?
But there is still another difficulty. He who does accept it,
and perforras as an hireling his day, will not only be an ordi
nary raan coraparatively, at the start, but he holds a place, and
is subjected to influences, under which it will be impossible to
maintain impartiality, and the reputation of impartiality ; ira
possible to earn and keep that trust, and confidence, and
affectionate and respectful regard, which the judge raust have,
or he is but half a judge.
I have sometiraes thought that the tenure of good behavior
has one effect a little like that which is produced by raaking
the raarriage tie indissoluble. If the " contract which reno
vates the world " were at the pleasure of both parties, they
would soraetiraes, often, quarrel and bring about a dissolution
in a month. But they know they have embarked for life —
for good and ill — for better and worse ; and they bear, with
one another; they excuse one another — ^they help one another
— they make each other to be that which their eyes and their
hearts desire. A little so in the relation of the judge to the !
bar, and the community. You want to invest hira with honor,
love, and confidence. If every time when he rules on a piece j
of evidence, or charges the jury, a young lawyer can say, half '
aloud in the bar, or his disappointed client can go to the next
tavern to say, " My good fellow, we will have you down here
in a year or two — you shall answer for this — raake the raost
26*

306 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of your time " — and so forth ; is it favorable to the culture
of such sentiraents ? Does it tend to beget that state of raind
towards hira in the coraraunity which prorapts " the ear to
bless hira, and the eye to give witness to him ? " Does it tend
in him to " ripen that dignity of disposition which grows with
the growth of an illustrious reputation ; and becomes a sort of
pledge to the public for security ? " Show to the bar, and to
the people, a judge by whora justice is to be dispensed for a
life-tirae, and all becorae rautually cooperative, respectful, and
attached. And still further. This ten-years judge of yours is placed
in a situation where he is in extreme danger of feeling, and of
being suspected of feeling so anxious a desire to secure his re
appointment, as to detract, justly or unjustly, somewhat from
that confidence in him without which there is no judge. It is
easy for the gentleraan from Abington [Mr. Keyes] to feel and
express with his habitual energy, indignation at the craven
spirit which could stoop to do anything to prolong his term of
office. It is easy, but is it to the purpose ? AU systems of
judicial appointment and tenure suppose the judge to be a
raortal raan, after all ; and all of them that are wise, and well
tried, aira to fortify, guard, and help that which his Maker has
left fallible and infirm. To inveigh against the lot of huraanity
is idle. Our business is to raake the best of it ; to assist its
weakness ; make the most of its virtue ; by no means, by no
means to lead it into any manner of temptation. He censures
God, I have heard, who quarrels with the imperfections of
raan. Do you not, however, terapt the judge, as his last years
are coraing, to cast about for re-appointraent ; to favor a little
raore this iraportant party, or this iraportant counsel, by whom
the patronage of the future is to be dispensed ? He will desire
to keep his place, wUl he not ? You have disqualified hira for
the raore active practice of his profession. He needs its re-
rauneration. Those whora he loves depend on it. The man
who can give it, or withhold it, is before him for what he calls
justice ; on the other side is a stranger without a name. Have
you placed hira in no peril ? Have you so framed your system,
as to do all that huraan wisdora can do — to " secure a trial as
impartial as the lot of humanity will adrait ? " If not, are we
quite equal to the great work we have taken in hand ?

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 307
There are two or three raore general observations with which
I leave the subject, which the pressure on your tirae, and my
own state of health, unfit me for thoroughly discussing.
In constructing our judicial systera, it seeras to rae not
unwise so to do it, that it shall rather operate, if possible, to in
duce young lawyers to aspire to the honors of the bench, not
by raeans of party politics, but by devoting theraselves to the
gtill and deep studies ofjhis,glQri6us scienceof the law. A
republic, it is said, is one great scramble for officeTTrom the
highest to the lowest in the State. The tendencies certainly
are to make every place a spoil for the victor, and to present
to abilities and ambition active service in the ranks of party,
victory under the banner, and by the warfare of party, as the
quickest and easiest raeans of winning every one. How full
of danger to justice, and to security, and to liberty, are such
tendencies, I cannot here and now pause to consider. These i
very changes of the judicial systera, facilitating the chances of!
getting on the bench by party merits and party titles, wUl give)
strength incalculable to such tendencies. How much wiser
to leave it as now, were it only to present motives to the better
youth of the profession to withdraw frora a too active and ve
hement political life ; to conceive, in the solitude of their libra
ries, the idea of a great judicial fame and usefulness ; and by
profound study and the raanly practice of the profession alone
seek to realize it ; to so prepare theraselves, in raind, attain
ments, character, to become judges by being lawyers only,
that when the ermine should rest on them, it should find, as
was said of Jay ^- as might be said of more than one on the
bench of both our Courts, of one trained by our systera for the
bench of the Supreme National Court — it should find " noth
ing that was not whiter than itself."
I do not know how far it is needful to take notice of an ob
jection by the gentleraan frora Fall River [Mr. Hooper,] and
less or raore by others, to the existing systera on the ground
that it is raonarchical, or anti-republican, or somehow incon
sistent with our general theories of liberty. He has dwelt a
good deal on it ; he says we raight just as well appoint a gov
ernor or a representative for life, or good behavior, as a judge ;
that it is fatally incorapatible with our frarae of governraent,
and the great principles on which it reposes. One word to this.

308 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
It seems to me that such an argument forgets that our po
litical system, while it is purely and intensely republican, with
in all theories, airas to accoraplish a twofold object, to wit :
liberty and security. To accomplish this twofold object we
have established a twofold set of institutions and instrumen
talities ; sorae of them designed to develop and give utterance
to one ; sorae of them designed to provide permanently and
constantly for the other ; some of them designed to bring out
the popular will in its utmost intensity of utterance ; sorae of
them designed to secure life, and liberty, and character, and
happiness, and property, and equal and exact justice, against
all will, and against all power. These institutions and instru
mentalities in their immediate mechanisra and workings, are as
distinct and diverse, one from the other, as they are in their of
fices, and in their ends. But each one is the more perfect for
the separation ; and the aggregate result is our own Massa
chusetts. Thus, in the law-making department, and in the whole de
partment of elections to office of those who make and those
who execute the law, you give the utmost assistance to the ex
pression of liberty. You give the choice to the people. You
make it an annual choice ; you give it to the raajority ; you
make, moreover, a free press ; you privilege debate ; you
give freedom to worship God according only to the dictates of
the individual conscience. ¦"" These are the mansions of liberty ;
here are her arms, and here her chariot. " In these institutions
we provide for her ; we testify our devotion to her ; we show
forth how good and how gracious she is — what energies she
kindles; what happiness she scatters; what virtues, what talents
wait on her — vivifying every atom, living in every neiVe,
beating in every pulsation.
But to the end that one man, that the majority, may not de
prive any of life, liberty, property, the opportunity of seeking
happiness, there are institutions of security. There is a Con
stitution to control the government. There is a separation of
departments of government. There is a judiciary to interpret
and adrainister the laws, " that every raan may find his security
therein." And in constituting these provisions for security,
you may have regard mainly to the specific and separate objects
which they have in view. You may very fitly appoint few

ON THE JUDICIAL TENURE. 309
judges only. You may very fitly so appoint them as to secure
learning, impartiality, the love and confidence ofthe State; be
cause thus best they will accoraplish the sole ends for which
they are created at all. If to those ends, too, it has been found,
in the long run, as huraan nature is, that it is better to give
thera a tenure of good behavior, you raay do so without de
parting in the least degree frora either of the tw^o great objects
of our political system. You promote one of them directly by
doing so. You do it without outrage on the other. Your
security is greater ; your liberty is not less. You assign to
liberty her place, her stage, her emotions, her ceremonies ; you
assign to law and justice theirs. The stage, the eraotions, the
visible presence of liberty, are in the mass meeting ; the pro
cession by torchlight ; at the polls ; in thchalls of legislation ;
in the voices of the press ; in the freedom of political speech ;
in the energy, intelligence and hope, which pervade the mass ;
in the silent, unreturning tide of progression. But there is
another apartraent, smaller, hurabler, raore quiet, down in the
basement story of our capitol — appropriated to justice, to se
curity, to reason, to restraint ;_ where there is no respect of
persons ; where there is no high nor low, no strong nor weak;
where will is nothing, and power is nothing, and numbers are
nothing — and all are equal, and all secure, before the law. Is
it a sound objection to your system, that in that apartment you
do not find the syrabols, the cap, the flag of freedora ? Is it
any objection to a court-roora that you cannot hold a raass raeet
ing in it, while a trial is proceeding ? Is liberty abridged, be-f
cause the procession returning by torchlight, from celebrating )
anticipated or actual party victory, cannot pull down a half- j
dozen houses of the opposition with impunity ; and because its i
leaders awake from the intoxications of her saturnalia to find
theraselves in jail for a riot ? Is it any objection that every .
object of the political system is not equally provided for in\
every part of it ? No, Sir. " Everything in its place, and a|
place for everything! " If the result is an aggregate of social]
and political perfection, absolute security combined with as
much liberty as you can live in, that is the state for you ! ;
Thank God for that ; let the flag wave over it; die for it !
One word only, further, and I leave this subject. It has
been maintained, with great force of arguraent, by ray friend

310 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
for Manchester, that there is no call by the people for any
change of the judicial systera. Certainly there is no proof of
such a caU. The documentary history of the Convention
utterly disproves it. But that topic is exhausted. I wished to
add only, that ray own observation, as far as it has gone, dis
proves it too. I have lost a good raany causes, first and last ;
and I hope to try, and expect to lose, a good many more ; but
I never heard a client in my life, however dissatisfied with the
verdict, or the charge, say a word about changing the tenure
of the judicial office. I greatly doubt, if I have heard as
many as three express themselves dissatisfied with the judge ;
though tiraes without number they have regretted that he
found hiraself corapeUed to go against thera. My own tenure
f I have often thought in danger — but I am yet to see the fijst
client who expressed a thought of meddling with that of the
Court. What is true of those clients, is true of the whole
people of Massachusetts. Sir, that people have two traits of
character — just as our political system in which that character
is shown forth, has two great ends. They love liberty; that
is one trait. They love it, and they possess it to their hearts'
content. Free as storras to-day do they not know it, and feel
it — every one of them, from the sea to the Green Mountains?
But there is another side to their character; and that is the old
Anglo-Saxon instinct of property ; the rational, and the credit
able desire to be secure in life, in reputation, in the earnings
of daily labor, in the little all which raakes up the treasures,
and the dear charities of the humblest home ; the desire to feel
certain when they come to die that the last will shall be kept,
the smallest legacy of affection shall reach its object, although
the giver is in his grave ; this desire, and the sound sense to
know that a learned, impartial, and honored judiciary is the
,only raeans of having it indulged. They have nothing tiraor-
lous in them, as touching the largest liberty. They rather like
(the exhilaration of crowding sail on the noble old ship, and
/giving her to scud away before a fourteen-knot breeze; but
I they know, too, that if the storm comes on to blow ; and the
, raasts go overboard ; and the gun-deck is rolled under water ;
I and the lee shore, edged with foam, thunders under her stern,
I that the sheet-anchor and best bower then are everything !
1 Give them good ground-tackle, and they wiU carry her round
the world, and back again, till there shall be no more sea.

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL
MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.
N0VE.MBBR 26, 1850.

[" The Citizens of Boston and its vicinity, who reverence the Constitu
tion of the United States ; who wish to discountenance a spirit of disobe
dience to the laws of the land, and refer all questions arising under those
laws to the proper tribunals ; who would regard with disfavor all further
popular agitation of subjects which endanger the peace and harmony of
the Union, and who deem the preservation of the Union the paramount
duty of every citizen, are requested to meet and express their sentiments
on the present posture of public affairs, in Faneuil Hall, Nov. 26, 1850,
at 4 o'clock, P. M."
The above call having been published in the newspapers, and posted
up in the " Merchants' Reading Room " for some days, received the sig
natures of about five thousand citizens of Massachusetts, and the meeting
was convened agreeably to the request therein expressed.
At a few minutes before four o'clock, the Committee of Arrangements
came in, and were received with loud cheers. At four o'clock, precisely,
Thomas B. Curtis, Esq., mounted the rostrum, and nominated for Presi
dent John C. Warren.
A series of resolutions having been read, the meeting was addressed
by B. R. Curtis, B. F. Hallett, and S. D. Bradford ; after which Mr.
Choate spoke as follows :]
I FEEL it, fellow-citizens, to be quite needless, for any purpose
of affecting your votes now, or your judgment and acts for the
future, that I should add a word to the resolutions before you,
and to the very able addresses by which they have been ex
plained and enforced. All that I would have said has been
better said. In all that I would have suggested, this great
assembly, so true and ample a representation of the sobriety,
and principle, and business, and patriotism of this city and its

312 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
vicinity, — if I raay judge from the raanner in which you have
responded to the sentiments of preceding speakers, — has far
outrun me. In aU that I had felt and reflected on the suprerae
iraportance of this deliberation, on the reality and urgency of
the peril, on the indispensable necessity which exists, that an
effort be raade, and raade at once, corabining the best counsels,
and the wisest and most decisive action of the community —
an effort to turn away raen's thoughts from those things which
concern this part or thit part, to those which concern the
whole of our America — to turn away men's solicitude about
the small politics that shall give a State administration this
year to one set, and the next year to another set, and fix it on
the grander politics by which a nation is to be held together —
to turn away men's hearts frora loving one brother of the
national household, and hating and reviling another, to that
larger, juster and wiser affection which folds the whole house
hold to its bosom — to turn away men's conscience and sense
of raoral obligation frora the morbid and raad pursuit of a
single duty, and indulgence of a single sentiraent, to the prac
tical ethics in which all duties are recognized, by which all
duties are reconcUed, and adjusted, and subordinated, according
to their rank, by which the sacredness of corapacts is holden
to be as real as the virtue of compassion, and the supremacy
of the law declared as absolute as the luxury of a tear is felt
to be sweet — to turn away raen's eyes from the glare of the
lights of a philanthropy — they caU it philanthropy — some
of whose ends may be specious, but whose raeans are bad faith,
abusive speech, ferocity of temper, and resistance to law ; and
whose fruit, if it ripens to fruit, will be woes unnumbered to
bond and free, — to turn all eyes frora the gUtter of such Ught
to the steady and unalterable glory of that wisdora, that justice,
and that best philanthropy under which.the States of America
have been enabled and may still be enabled to live together in
peace, and grow together into the nature of one people, — in
all that I had felt and reflected on these things, you have out
run ray warmest feelings and my best thoughts. What
remains, then, but that I congratulate you on at least this
auspicious indication, and take ray leave ? One or two sug
gestions, however, you wiU pardon to the peculiarity of the
times.

ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 31 3
I concur then, first, Fellow-citizens, with one of the resolu
tions, in expressing my sincerest conviction that the Union is
in extrerae peril this day. Sorae good and wise men, I know,
do not see this; and some not quite so good or wise, deny that
they see it. I know very well that to sound a false alarm is a
shallow and contemptible thing. But I know, also, that too
much precaution is safer than too little, and I believe that less
than the utmost is too little now. Better, it is said, to be ridi
culed for too much care, than to be ruined by too confident a
security. I have then a profound conviction, that the Union is
yet in danger. It is true that it has passed through one peril
within the last few raonths, — such a peril, that the future his
torian of America wUl pause with astonishment and terror
when he comes to record it. The sobriety of the historic style
will rise to eloquence, — to pious ejaculation, — to thanksgiv
ings to Almighty God, — as he sketches that scene and the
virtues that triumphed in it. " Honor and praise," wUl he ex
claira, " to the eminent raen of all parties — to Clay, to Cass,
to Foote, to Dickinson, to Webster — who rose that day to the
measure of a true greatness, — who remembered that they had
a country to preserve as well as a local constituency to gratify,
— who laid all the wealth, and all the hopes of illustrious lives
on the altar of a hazardous patriotisra, — who reckoned all the
sweets of a present popularity for nothing in coraparison of
that more exceeding weight of glory which follows hira who
seeks to corapose an agitated and save a sinking land."
That night is passed, and that peril ; and yet it is still
night, and there is peril still. And what do I raean by this ?
I believe, and rejoice to believe, that the general judgraent of
the people is yet sound on this transcendent subject. But I
will tell you where I think the danger lies. It is, that while
the people sleep, pohticians and philanthropists of the legisla
tive hall — the sturap, and the press — will talk and write us out
of our Union. Yes — whUe you sleep, whUe the raerchant is
loading his ships, and the farmer is gathering his harvests, and
the music of the hamraer and shuttle wake around, and we are
all steeped in the enjoyment of that vast and various good
which a comraon governraent places within our reach — there
are influences that never sleep, and which are creating and
diffusing a public opinion, in whose hot and poisoned breath,
VOL. II. 27

314 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
before we yet perceive our evil plight, this Union raay melt as
frost-work in the sun. Do we sufficiently appreciate how om
nipotent is opinion in the matter of all government ? Do we
consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must
be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united gov
ernraent ? Do we often enough advert to the distinction, that
while our State governraents must exist alraost of necessity, and
with no effort frora within or without, the Union of the States
is a totally different creation — more delicate, more artificial,
more recent, far raore truly a mere production of the reason
and- the will — standing in far more need of an ever-surround
ing care, to preserve and repair it, and urge it along its high
way ? Do we reflect that while the people of Massachusetts,
for exaraple, are in all senses one — not E Pluribus Unum —
but one single and uncompounded substance, so to speak —
and while every influence that can possibly help to hold a social
existence together — identity of interest ; closeness of kindred ;
contiguity of place ; old habit ; the ten thousand opportunities
of daily intercourse ; everything — is operating to hold such a
State together, so that it raust exist whether we wiU or not,
and " cannot, but by annihUating, die" — the people of Araerica
corapose a totally different coraraunity — a coraraunity raiscel
laneous and widely scattered ; that they are many States, not
one State, or if one, made up of many which still coexist ;
that nuraerous influences of vast energy, influences of situation,
of political creeds, of employments, of supposed or real diver
sities of material interest, tend evermore to draw thera asun
der ; and that is not, as in a single State, that instinct, custom,
a long antiquity, closeness of kindred, immediate contiguity,
the personal intercourse of daily life and the like, come in to
raake and consolidate the grand incorporation, whether we will
or not ; but that is to be accoraplished by carefully cultivated
and acquired habits and states of feeling; by an enlightened dis-
cernraent of great interests, embracing a continent and a future
age ; by a voluntary deterraination to love, honor, and cherish,
by rautual tolerance, by rautual indulgence of one another's
peculiarities, by the raost politic and careful withdrawal of our
attention from the offensive particulars in which we differ, and
by the most assiduous development and appreciation, and con
templation of those things wherein we are alike — do we reflect

ON THE PRESERVATION OP THE UNION. 315
as we ought, that it is only thus — by varieties of expedients,
by a prolonged and voluntary educational process, that the fine
and strong spirit of nationality raay be made to penetrate
and animate the scarcely congruous mass — and the full tide
of Araerican feeling to fill the raighty heart ?
I have soraetimes thought that the States in our system raay
be corapared to the priraordial particles of raatter, indivisible,
indestructible, impenetrable, whose natural condition is to repel
each other, or, at least, to exist, in their own independent iden
tity, — whUe the Union is an artificial aggregation of such par
ticles ; a sort of forced state, as some have said, of life ; a com
plex structure made with hands, which gravity, attrition, time,
rain, dew, frost, not less than terapest and earthquake, cooperate
to waste away, and which the anger of a fool — or the laugh
ter of a fool — raay bring down in an hour ; a system of bodies
advancing slowly through a resisting medium, operating at all
.times to retard, and at any moraent liable to arrest its raotion ;
a beautiful, yet fragile creation, which a breath can unraake,
as a breath has raade it.
And now, charged with the trust of holding together such a
nation as this, what have we seen ? What do we see to-day ?
Exactly this. It has been, for raany months, — years, I may
say; but, assuredly for a long season, — the peculiar infelicity,
say, rather, terrible misfortune of this country, that the attention
of the people has been fixed without the respite of a raoraent,
exclusively on one of those subjects — the only one — on which
we disagree precisely according to geographical lines. And
not so only, but this subject has been one — unlike tariff', or
internal iraprovements, or the disbursement of the public
money, on which the dispute cannot be maintained, for an
hour, without heat of blood, mutual loss of respect, alienation
of regard — menacing to end in hate, strong and cruel as the
grave. I call this only a terrible raisfortune. I blarae here and
now, no raan, and no policy for it. Circurastances have forced
it upon us all ; and down to the hour that the series of cora
proraise measures was corapleted and presented to the country,
or certainly to congress, I wUl not here and now say, that it
was the fault of one raan, or one region of country, or one party
more than another.

316 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES
" But the pity of it, lago — the pity of it."
How appalling have been its effects ; and how deep and
damning will be his guilt who rejects the opportunity of recon
cilement, and continues this accursed agitation, without neces
sity, for another hour !
Why, is there any raan so bold or blind as to say he be
lieves that the scenes through which we have been passing,
for a year, have left the American heart where they found it ?
Does any man believe that those affectionate and respectful re
gards, that attachraent and that trust, those " cords of love and
bands of a raan " — which knit this people together as one, in
an earlier and better tirae, — are as strong to-day as they were
a year ago ? Do you believe that there can have been so tre
mendous an apparatus of influences at work so long, some de
signed, some undesigned, but all at work in oiie way, that is,
to make the two great divisions of the national family hate
each other, and yet have no effect ? Recall what we have seen
in that time, and weigh it well ! Consider how many hun
dreds of speeches were made in congress — all to show how
extrerae and intrepid an advocate the speaker could be of the
extrerae Northern sentiment, or the extrerae Southern senti
ment. Consider how raany scores of thousands of every one
of those speeches were printed and circulated araong the hon
orable raeraber 's constituents, — not rauch elsewhere, — the
great mass of whom agreed with hira perfectly, and was only
raade the raore angry and raore unreasonable by thera. Con
sider what caballings and conspirings were going forward dur
ing that session in coraraittee rooras and members' chambers,
and think of their private correspondence with enterprising
waiters on events. Turn to the American newspaper press,
secular and religious — every editor — or how vast a propor
tion ! transformed into a manufacturer of raere local opinion
— local opinion — local opinion — working away at his battery
— big or little — as if it were the most beautiful operation in
the world to persuade one half of the people how unreasonable
and how odious were the other half Think of conventions
sitting for secession and dismeraberraent, by the very torab of
Jackson — the "buried majesty" not rising to scatter and
blast thera. Call to raind how many elections have been

ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 31'^
holden — stirring the wave of the people to its profoundest
depths — all turning on this topic. Reraeraber how few of all
who help to give direction to general sentiment, how few in
either house of congress, what a handful only of editors and
preachers and talkers have ventured anywhere to breathe a
word above a whisper to hush or divert the pelting of this
pitiless storm ; and then consider how delicate and sensitive a
thing is public opinion, — how easy it is to mould and color
and kindle it, and yet that when moulded and colored and
fired, not all the bayonets and artillery of Borodino can raain
tain the governraent which it decrees to perisli ; and say if you
have not been encorapassed, and are not now, by a peril, awful
indeed ! Say if you believe it, possible that a whole people can
go on — a reading and excitable people — hearing nothing,
reading nothing, talking of nothing, thinking of nothing, sleep
ing and waking on nothing, for a year, but one incessant and
veheraent appeal to the strongest of their passions, — to the
pride, anger, and fear of the South, to the philanthropy, hu
raanity, and conscience of the North, — one half of it airaed to
persuade you that they were cruel, arabltious, indolent, and
licentious, and therefore hateful ; and the other half of it to
persuade them that you were desperately and hypocritically
fanatical and aggressive, and therefore hateful — say, if an ex
citable people can go through all this, and not be the worse for
it ! I tell you nay. Such a year has sowed the seed of a har
vest, which, if not nipped in the bud, will grow to arraed men,
hating with the hate of the brothers of Thebes.
It seeras to me as if our hearts were changing. Ties the
strongest, influences the sweetest, seem falling asunder as
smoking flax. I took up, the day before yesterday, a religious
newspaper, published in this city, a leading Orthodox paper, I
may describe it, to avoid misapprehension. The first thing
which met ray eye was what purported to be an extract frora
a Southern religious newspaper, denouncing the Boston editor,
or one of his contributors, as an infidel — in just so raany
words — on the ground that one of his anti-slavery arguraents
implied a doctrine inconsistent with a certain text of the New
Testament. Surely, I said to myself, the Christian thus de
nounced will be deeply wounded by such misconstruction ; and
as he lives a thousand miles away from slavery, as it really
27 *

318 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
does not seem to be his business, as it neither picks his pocket
nor breaks his leg, and he may, therefore, afford to be cool,
while his Southern brother lives in the very heart of it, and
may, naturally enough, be a little more sensitive, he will try
to soothe hira, and win hira, if he can, to reconsider and retract
so grievous an objurgation. No such thing ! To be called an
infidel, says he, by this Southern Presbyterian, I count a real
honor ! fle thereupon proceeds to denounce the slave-holding
South as a downright Sodom, — leaves a pretty violent impli
cation that his Presbyterian antagonist is not one of its few
righteous, whoever else is — and without raore ado sends him
adrift. Yes, Fellow-citizens, raore than the Methodist Episco
pal Church is rent in twain. But if these things are done in
the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? If the spirit of
Christianity is not of power sufficient to enable its avowed pro
fessors to conduct this disputation of hatred with teraper and
decorura, — to say nothing of charity, — what may we expect
from the hot blood of men who own not, nor comprehend the
law of love ?
I have spoken what I think of the danger that threatens the
Union. I have done so more at length than I could have
wished, because I know that upon the depth of our convictions
and the sincerity of our apprehensions upon this subject, the
views we shall take of our duties and responsibilities, raust all
depend. If you concur with rae that there is danger, you will concur
with rae in the second place, that thoughtful raen have sorae
thing to do to avert it ; and what is that ? It is not, in ray
judgraent, FeUow-citizens, by stereotyped declaraation on the
utilities of the Union to South or North that we can avert the
danger. It is not by shutting our eyes and ears to it that we
can avert it. It is not by the foolish prattle of " Oh, those
people off there need the Union raore than we, and will not
dare to quit." It is not by putting arras a-kirabo here or there
and swearing that we will stand no raore bullying ; and if any
body has a mind to dissolve the Union, let hira go ahead.
Not thus, not thus, felt and acted that generation of our
fathers, who, out of distracted counsels, the keen jealousies
of States, and a decaying nationality, by patience and teraper
as adrairable as their wisdom, constructed the noble and

ON THE PRESERVATION OP THE UNION. 319
proportioned fabric of our federal system. " Oh, rise some
other such ! "
No, Fellow-citizens — there is something more and other for
us to do. And what is that ? Among other things, chiefly
this : to accept that whole body of measures of corapromise,
as they are called, by which the governraent has sought to
compose the country, in the spirit of 1787? — and then, that
henceforward every man, according to his raeasure, and in his
place, in his party, in his social, or his literary, or his religious
circle, in whatever may be his sphere of influence, set him
self to suppress the further political agitation of this whole
subject. Of these measures of comproraise I raay say, in general, that
they give the whole victory to neither of the great divisions of
the country, and are therefore the fitter to forra the basis of a
permanent adjustment, I think that under their operation and
by the concurrence of other agencies it will assuredly come to
pass, that on all that vast accession of territory beyond and
above Texas, no slave will ever breathe the air, and I rejoice at
that. They abolish the slave-trade in the District of Columbia,
and I rejoice at that. They restore the fugitive to the master,
— and while I mourn that there is a slave who needs to run,
or a raaster who desires to pursue, I should be unworthy of the
privilege of addressing this asserably, if I did not declare that
I have not a shadow of doubt that congress has the constitu
tional power to pass this law just as it is, and had no doubt,
before I listened to the clear and powerful arguraent of Mr,
Curtis to-night, that it was out of all question their duty to pass
sorae effectual law on the subject, and that it is incurabent on
every raan who recognizes a single obligation of citizenship, to
assist, in his spheres, in its execution.
Accepting, then, these raeasures of constitutional compro
mise, in the spirit of Union, let us set ourselves to suppress or
mitigate the political agitation of slavery.
And in the first place, I submit that the two great political
parties of the North are called upon by every consideration of
patriotism and duty to strike this whole subject from their re
spective issues. I go for no amalgamation of parties, and for
the forming of no new party. But I adrait the deepest solici
tude that those which now exist, preserving their actual organ-

320 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
ization and general principles and airas, — if so it raust be, —
should to this extent coalesce. Neither can act in this behalf
effectually alone. Honorable concert is indispensable, and they
owe it to the country. Have not the erainent raen of both these
great organizations united on this adjustraent? Are they not
both priraarily national parties ? Is it not one of their. raost ira
portant and beautiful uses that they extend the whole length
and breadth of our land, and that they help or ought to help to
hold the extreme North to the extreme South by a tie stronger
almost than that of raere patriotisra, by that surest ceraent of
friendship, — coraraon opinions on the great concerns of the Re
public? You are a Democrat; and have you not for thirty-
two years in fifty united with the universal Democratic party '
in the choice of Southern presidents ? Has it not been your
function for even a larger part of the last half century to rally
with the South for the support of the general administration?
Has it not ever been your boast, your merit as a party, that
you are in an intense, and even characteristic degree, national
and Unionist in your spirit and politics, although you had your
origin in the assertion of State rights ; that you have contrib
uted in a thousand ways to the extension of our territory and the
establishraent of our martial fame ; and that you follow the flag
on whatever field or deck it waves ? — and will you for the sake
of a teraporary victory in a State, or for any other cause, in
sert an article in your creed and give a direction to your tac
tics which shall detach you frora such corapanionship and unfit
you for such service in all tirae to corae ?
You are a Whig — I give you ray hand on that — and is
not your party national too ? Do you not find your fastest al
lies at the South ? Do you not need the vote of Louisiana, of
North Carolina, of Tennessee, of Kentucky, to defend you from
the redundant capital, matured skill, and pauper labor of Eu
rope ? Did you not just now, with a wise contempt of sectional
issues and sectional noises, unite to call that brave, firm and good
Old Man frora his plantation, and seat hira with all the hon
ors in the place of Washington ? Circumstances have forced
both of these parties — the Northern and the Southern divisions
of both — to suspend for a space the legitiraate objects of their
institution. For a space, laying them aside, and resolving our
selves into our individual capacities, we have thought and felt

ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 321
on nothing but slavery. Those circurastances exist no longer,
— and shall we not instantly revive the old creeds, renew
the old ties, and by raanly and honorable concert, resolve to
spare Araerica that last calaraity, — the forraation of parties
according to geographical lines ?
I maintain, in the second place, that the Conscience of this
coraraunity has a duty to do, not yet adequately perforraed ;
and that is, on grounds of moral obligation, not merely to call
up raen to the obedience of law, but on the sarae grounds to
discourage and raodify the further agitation of this topic of
slavery, in the spirit in which, thus far, that agitation has been
conducted. I mean to say, that our moral duties, not at all
less than our political interests, demand that we accept this
comproraise, and that we proraote the peace it is designed to
restore. FeUow-citizens, was there ever a developraent of sheer fanat
icism more uninstructed, or raore dangerous than that which
teaches that conscience prescribes the continued political, or oth
er exasperating agitation of this subject ? That it will help, in
the least degree, to ameliorate the condition of one slave, or to
hasten the day of his emancipation, I do not believe, and no
man can be certain that he knows. But the philanthropist, so
he qualifies himself, will say that slavery is a relation of wrong,
and whatever becomes of the effort, conscience irapels him to
keep up the agitation tUl the wrong, somehow, is ended. Is
he, I answer, quite sure that a conscience enlightened to a com
prehension and coraparison of all its duties impels him to do
any such thing ? Is he quite sure that that which an English
or French or German philanthropist might in conscience coun
sel or do, touching this matter of Southern slavery, that that
also he, the Araerican philanthropist, may, in conscience, coun
sel or do ? Does it go for nothing in his ethics, that he stands,
that the whole raorality of the North stands, in a totally differ
ent relation to the community of the South from that of the
foreign propagandist, and that this relation may possibly sorae
what — aye, to a vast extent — raodify aU our duties? Instead
of hastily inferring that, because those States are sister States,
you are bound to raeddle and agitate, and drive pitch-pine knots
into their flesh and set thera on fire, raay not the fact that they
are sister States, be the very reason why, though others may

322 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
do so, you may not ? In whomsoever else these enterprises of
an offensive and aggressive morality are graceful or safe or
right, are you quite sure that in you they are either graceful
or safe or right ?
I have heard that a great statesman, living in the North, but
living and thinking for the country, has been coraplained of for
saying that we have no raore to do with slavery in the South,
than with slavery in Cuba. Are you quite sure that the sen
tiraent went far enough ? Have we quite as rauch to do — I
raean can we wisely or morally assume to do quite as much —
with Southern as with Cuban slavery ? To all the rest of the
world we are united only by the tie of philanthropy, or univer
sal benevolence, and our duties to that extent flow from that
tie. All that such phUanthropy prorapts us to print or say
or do, touching slavery in Cuba, we raay print, say, or do,
for what I know or care, subject, I would recommend, to the
restraints of comraon sense, and taking reasonable thought for
our personal security. But to Araerica — to our America, we
are united by another tie, and raay not a principled patriotism,
on the clearest grounds of moral obligation, lirait the sphere
and control the aspirations and prescribe the flights of philan
thropy itself?
In the first place, remember, I entreat you, that on consid
erations of policy and wisdom — • truest policy, profoundest
wisdora, for the greater good and the higher glory of Amer
ica — for the good of the master and slave, now and for all
generations — you have entered with the Southern States into
the most sacred and awful and tender of all the relations, — the
relation of country; and therefore, that you have, expressly
and by iraplication, laid yourselves under certain restraints ; you
have pledged yourselves to a certain raeasure, and a certain
spirit of forbearance ; you have shut yourselves out frora cer
tain fields and highways of philanthropic enterprise — open
to you before, open to tbe rest of the world now ; — but from
which, in order to bestow larger and mightier blessings on man,
in another way, you have agreed to retire.
Yes, we have entered with them into the raost sacred, salu
tary, and perraanent of the relations of social raan. We have
united with thera in that great raaster performance of human
beings, that one work on which the moralists whom I love

ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 323
concur in supposing that the Suprerae Governor looks down
with peculiar coraplacency, the building of a Coraraonwealth.
Finding theraselves side by side with those States sorae sixty
years ago in this new world, thirteen States of us then in all !
thirty-one to-day, — touching one another on a thousand points,
— discerning perfectly that unless the doora of raan was to be
reversed for thera, there was no alternative but to becorae
dearest friends or bitterest enemies, — so much Thucydides and
the historians of the beautiful and miserable Italian republics
of the Middle Age had taught them, — drawn together, also
felicitously, by a coraraon speech and blood, and the raemory
of their recent labor of glory, — our fathers adopted the con
clusion that the best interests of humanity, in aU her forms,
deraanded that we should enter into the grand, sacred, and
tender relations of country. All things deraanded it, — the
love of raan, the hopes of liberty, — all things. Hereby, only,
can Araerica bless herself, and bless the world.
Consider, in the next place, that to secure that largest good,
to create and preserve a country, and thus to contribute to the
happiness of raan as far as that grand and vast instrumentality
may be raade to contribute to happiness, it becarae indispen
sable to take upon theraselves, for theraselves, and for all the
generations who should follow, certain engageraents with those
to whom we becarae united. Some of these engagements
were express. Such is that for the restoration of persons ow
ing service according to the law of a State, and flying frora it.
That is express. It is written in this Constitution in terras.
It was inserted in it, by what passed, sixty years ago, for the
morality and religion of Massachusetts and New England.
Yes ; it was written there by raen who knew their Bible, Old
Testaraent and New, as thoroughly, and reverenced it and its
Divine Author and his Son, the Saviour and Redeeraer, as
profoundly as we. Others of those engagements, and those
how vast and sacred, were implied. It is not enough to say
that the Constitution did not give to the new nation a particle
of power to intermeddle by law with slavery within its States,
and therefore it has no such power. This is true, but not all
the truth. No man pretends we have power to intermeddle
by law. But how much more than this is implied in the
sacred relation of country. It is a marriage of more than two.

324 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
for more than a fleeting natural life. " It is to Jbe looked on
with other reverence." It is an engagement, as between the real
parties to it, an engagement the raost soleran, to love, honor,
cherish, and keep through all the ages of a nation. It is an
engageraent the raost soleran, to cultivate those aff'ections that
shall lighten and perpetuate a tie which ought to last so long.
It is an engageraent then, which liraits the sphere, and controls
the enterprises of phUanthropy itself If you discern that by
violating the express pledge of the Constitution, and refusing
to permit the fugitive to be restored ; by violating the implied
pledges ; by denying the Christianity of the holder of slaves ;
by proclairaing hira impure, cruel, undeserving of affection,
trust, and regard; that by this passionate and veheraent aggres
sion upon the prejudices, institutions, and investraents of a
whole region — that by all this you are dissolving the ties of
country ; endangering its disruption ; frustrating the policy on
which our fathers created it ; and bringing into jeopardy the
raultiforra and incalculable good which it was designed to
secure, and would secure, — then, whatever foreign philan
thropy raight do, in such a prospect, — your philanthropy is
arrested and rebuked by a " higher law." In this competition
of affections. Country, — " omnes omnium charitates complec-
tens," the expression, the sum total of all things raost dearly
loved, surely holds the first place.
Will anybody say, that these engageraents thus taken, for
these ends, are but " covenants with hell," which there is no
morality and no dignity in keeping ? From such desperate
and shameless fanaticism — if such there is — I turn to the
moral sentiments of this assembly. It is not here — it is not
in this hall — the blood of Warren in the chair — the form of
Washington before you — that I wUl defend the Constitution
from the charge of being a compact of guilt. I will not here
defend the Convention which framed it, and the Conventions
and people which adopted it, frora the charge of having bought
this great blessing of country, by iramoral promises, more
honored in the breach than the observance. 'Thank God, we
yet hold that that transaction was honest, that work beautiful
and pure ; and those engageraents, in all their length and
breadth and height and depth, sacred.
Yet, I wUl say that, if to the formation of such a Union, it

ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 325
was indispensable, as we know it was, to contract these engage
ments expressed and implied, no covenant made by man ever
rested on the basis of a sounder raorality. They tell us that
although you have the strict right, according to the writers on
public law, to whora Mr. Curtis has referred, to restore the
fugitive slave to his raaster, yet that the virtue of corapassion
coraraands you not to do so. But in order to enable ourselves
to do all that good, and avert all that evil — boundless and inap
preciable both • — which we do and avert by the instruraentality
of a Union uuder a coraraon governraent, raay we not, on the
clearest moral principles, agree not to exercise compassion in
that particular way ? The raere virtue of compassion would
command you to rescue any prisoner. But the citizen, to the
end that he may be enabled, and others be enabled, to indulge
a more various and useful compassion in other raodes, agrees
not to indulge it practicaUy in that raode. Is such a stipula
tion iraraoral? No more so is this of the Constitution.
They tell us that slavery is so wicked a thing, that they
must pursue it, by agitation, to its horae in the States ; and
that if there is an iraplied engageraent to abstain frora doing
so, it is an engageraent to neglect an opportunity of doing
good, and void in the forura of conscience. But was it ever
heard of, that one raay not raorally bind hiraself to abstain
from what he thinks a particular opportunity of doing good ?
A contract in general restraint of philanthropy, or any other
useful calling, is void; but a contract to abstain from a specific
sphere of exertion, is not void, and raay be wise and right.
To entitle hiraself to instruct heathen children on week days,
might not a pious raissionary engage not to atterapt to preach
to their parents on Sunday? To win the opportunity of achiev
ing the raighty good summed up in the pregnant language of
the prearable to the Constitution, such good as man has not on
this earth been many times permitted to do or dreara of, we
might well surrender the privilege of reviling the raasters of
slaves with whom we must " either live or bear no life."
Will the philanthropist tell you that there is nothing conspic
uous enough, and glorious enough for him, in thus refraining
from this agitation, just because our relations to the South,
under the Constitution, seem to forbid it ? Aye, indeed ! Is
it even so ? Is his raorality of so ambitious and' mounting a
VOL. II. 28

326 ' MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
type that an effort, by the exercise of love or kindness or
tolerance, to knit still closer the hearts of a great people, and
thus to insure ages of peace — of progress, of enjoyraent —
to so vast a raass of the faraily of man, seems too trivial a
feat ? Oh, how stupendous a raistake ! What achieveraent of
philanthropy bears any proportion to the pure and perraanent
glory of that achieveraent whereby clusters of contiguous States,
perfectly organized governraents in theraselves every one, full
of energy, conscious of strength, full of valor, fond of war, —
instead of growing first jealous, then hostile, — like the tribes
of Greece after the Persian had retired, — like the cities of
Italy at the dawn of the raodern world, — are raelted into one,
so that for centuries of internal peace, the grand agencies of
amelioration and advancement shall operate unimpeded ; the
rain and dew of Heaven descending on ground better and still
better prepared to admit thera; the course of tirae — the Prov
idence of God — leading on that noiseless progress whose
wheels shall turn not back, whose consuraraation shall be in
the brightness of the latter day. What achievement of man
raay be compared with this achieveraent ? For the slave, alone,
what promises half so rauch ? And this is not glorious enough
for the arabition of phUanthropy !
No, Fellow-citizens — first of raen are the builders of era-
pires ! Here it is, ray friends, here — right here — in doing
soraething in our day and generation towards " forraing a
raore perfect Union " — in doing soraething by literature, by
public speech, by sound industrial policy, by the careful culture
of fraternal love and regard, by the intercourse of business
and friendship, by all the means within our command — in
doing something to leave the Union, when we die, stronger
than we found it, — here — here is the field of our grandest
duties and highest rewards. Let the grandeur of such duties,
let the splendor of such rewards, suffice us. Let them rec
oncile and constrain us to turn frora that equivocal philan
thropy which violates contracts, which traraples on law,
which confounds the whole subordination of virtues, which
counts it a light thing that a nation is rent asunder, and the
swords of brothers sheathed in the bosoras of brothers, if thus
the chains of one slave may be violently and prematurely
broken.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL.
OCTOBER 31, 1855.

I AM gratified, beyond the power of language to express,
by your kindness. By this thronging audience I am even
more gratified. In this alone I hope I see the doom of the geo
graphical party. It would have been a thing portentous and
mournful, if coraraercial Boston had not thus poured itself into
this Hall, to declare, by its ten thousand voices, against the
first measure tending practically and with a real menace to a
separation of the States ever yet presented, or certainly in our
time presented, to the judgraent or the passions of the people
of America. Who should be of the earliest to discern and of
the wisest to decide the true great question of the day ? Did
anybody suppose that your intelligence could not see what a
proposition to organize the people of this country into two
great geographical parties raust come to if successful ? Did
anybody suppose that, seeing this, you would help it on, or fall
asleep upon it ? You, the children of the merchant princes, —
you, whose profession of coraraerce and arts give you to
know and feel, with a sort of professional consciousness and
intensity, our republic to be one, — one and undivided ; one and
indivisible, let us say, — you, whose hearts, abroad, yet untrav
elled, have soraetimes leaped up when you have seen the radi
ant flag, burning on the waste sea, along the desolate and
distant coast, beneath unfamiliar constellations ; — and when you
have felt your country's great arm around you, were you ex
pected to be indifferent upon a proposition to rend her into two
great rabid factions, or to be cheated into a belief that there
was no such proposition before the country at all ?
Thank God, this sight dispels both branches of this rais-

328 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
apprehension. The city is here, all right and straight out!
Commerce is here ! Commerce, in whose wants, on whose
call, the Union, this Union, under this Constitution, began to
be ; Coraraerce that rocked the cradle is here, — not to follow
the hearse, but to keep off the raurderer ; or, if they prefer it,
to keep off the doctor !
The arts, the industry, of civUization, of inteUect, and of the
people, are here; they to which the raines and wheat-fields and
cotton-grounds of a bountiful and coramon country supply that
raw raaterial which they give back in shapes of use and taste
and beauty — they are here; — they who celebrated the estab
lishment of the governraent by long processions of the trades,
by rausic and banners, and thanksgiving to God, — singing to
gether as raorning stars over the rising ball, for the hope of a
future of rewarded labor — they are here to bear witness, that
the prayers of the fathers have been graciously heard, and to
remember and to guard that instrumentality of constitutional
union, to which, under his goodness, they owe all these things.
Aye, and the charities, the philanthropy, the huraanity, that
dwell in these horaes and hearts, are here to raake their protest
against the first step to moral treason — charities that love all
huraan kind ; yet are coraprehended all and enfolded in the
dear narae of country, — phUanthropy and huraanity — not
spasmodic, not savage, not the cold phrase of the politician,
not hypocritical, not impatient, but just, wise, combining, work
ing with — not in spite of — the will of the Highest, sowing the
seed with tears, with trust, and comraitting the harvest to the
eternal years of God — these are here. Yes, we are all here.
We corae to ratify the ratification. We corae to say to our
excellent representatives in the late Convention, again and
again, Well done, good and faithful ! We come to engage our
hearty support and our warraest good wishes for the success
of the candidates they have nominated, every man of them.
We come to declare that upon trying ourselves by all the
approved tests, we are perfectly satisfied that we are alive;
that we are glad we are alive, since there is work to do worthy
of us ; that we prefer to remain for the present, Whigs ! Con
stitutional Whigs ! Massachusetts Whigs! FaneuU HaU Whigs!
Daniel Webster and Henry Clay Whigs ! — that we have no
new party to choose to-night ; that, when we have, we shaU

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 329
choose any other, aye, any other, than that which draws the
black line of physical and social geography across the charraed
surface of our native land, and finds a republic on one side to
love, and nothing but an aristocracy to be "abhorred" and
" avoided " on the other ! Take any shape but that ! We
corae to protest, with all possible eraphasis and soleranity,
against the inauguration, as they call it, of the party of the
sections. We say that for any object which constitutional pa
triotisra can approve, such a party is useless. We say, that
for its own avowed objects, if it has any specific and definite
objects which are constitutional and just, it is useless. We
say, that if defeated in its attempt to get possession of the
national government, the mere struggle will insure the triumph
of that very adrainistration on which it seeras to raake war ;
will raake the fortune of certain local dealers in politics ; will
agitate and alienate and tend to put asunder whora God hath
joined. We hold that if it should succeed in that attempt, it
would be the most terrible of public calaraities. I, for one, do
not believe that this nation could bear it. I ara not, it is true,
quite of the mind of the Senator frora Ohio, who dared to tell
an asserably in Maine, not many days since, that there is now
no union between us and the South ; that the pretended Union
is all meretricious ; that there is no heart in it ; that Russia
does not hate England, nor England Russia, more than the
men of the North and the men of the South hate each other.
The allegation is, I think, yet untrue ; tbe pleasure, the appar
ent pleasure and exultation with which he uttered it, is noth
ing less than awful ! But yet, when we keep in view, as ever
we raust, the grand and unalterable conditions and peculiarities
of the American national life ; the capital fact lying underneath
that we are historically, by constitutional law, and to a vast
practical extent, a mere neighborhood of separate and sover
eign States, united practically by a written league, or raore
accurately, by a government holding only a few great powers,
and touching a few large objects ; united better, perhaps, so
far as united at all, by the raoral ties of blood and race, a
coraraon flag, the raeraory of coraraon dangers, the heritage of
a comraon glory; — united thus, partially by that subtUe es
sence of nationality, the consciousness of unity, the pride of
unity, — itself a spirit of recent creation, requiring stUl to be
28*

330 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
solicited, to be reinforced, to be diffused; having regard to
those instruraentalities and influences, raoral* and physical,
which encompass us ever and endanger us, and especially to
the consideration that besides the centrifugal tendencies of sov
ereign States, impeUing thera ever apart, there is a line, — a
dark, dark line, — alraost a fissure in the granite, whose imper
fect cohesion can scarcely resist the vast weight on either side;
— recollecting these things, and recollecting, too, how much
raore than by reason or public virtue or their true interests, men
are moved by anger, pride, and force, in great civil crises, — in
any way we can survey it, we cannot possibly fail to see that
the process of forming such an organization, and its influence,
if completely formed and fully in action, would corapose a new
and disturbing eleraent in our systera, which it is scarcely able
to encounter, and to which no wise man and genuine Unionist
would not shudder to see it exposed.
Why, look at it. Here is a stupendous fabric of architec
ture ; a castle ; a capitol ; suppose the capitol at Washington.
It is a fortress at once, and a temple. The great central dorae
swells to heaven. It rests grandly on its hill by its own
weight kept steadfast, and seeraingly iraraovable ; Titan hands
raight have built it ; it raay stand to see the age of a nation
pass by. But one iraperfection there is ; a seam in the mar
ble ; a flaw in the iron ; a break scarcely visible, yet a real
vertical fissure, parting by an imperceptible opening frora top
to foundation the whole in two. The builder saw it, and
guarded against it as well as he raight ; those who followed,
to repair, with pious and skUful hands, tried by underpinning,
by lateral support, by buttress and buttress alternately, to hold
the disjointed sides in contact. Practically, it was becoming
less forraidable ; the raoss was beginning to conceal it, even ;
and here coraes a workraan who proposes to knock out the
well-planned lateral supports, loosen the underpinning of the
ends, dig a yawning excavation under both of them, and then
set on each the raountain weight of a frowning and defiant
dorae of its own. Down the huge pile topples in an hour.
Small corapensation it is that the architect of ruin finds his
grave, too, beneath it !
It is to do what we may to scatter this organization in its
beginnings that we are here to-night. It is for this opportu-

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 331
nity, chiefly, that the Whigs of Massachusetts are absolutely
glad that they are alive. True, we seek also to redeem Massa
chusetts. That last legislative year of all sorts of ignorance,
and all sorts of folly, and all sorts of corruption ; not dignified,
but made hateful and shameful by a sraall and raean mimicry
of treason, withal — we would blot it all out from our proud
annals forever. The year which deserted Washburn, slighted
the counsels of Clifford, struck a feeble but malignant blow at
the judicial tenure, nuUified a law of the Union, constitutional,
if the Constitution is constitutional, — we would forget. Let
it not come into the number of our months. In fact, let us
talk of something else.
Yes, Whigs of Boston and Massachusetts ! We strike at
higher game. It is because the experiment is now making,
whether a sectional party, merging and overriding all others,
is possible ; whether candidates for the presidency shall openly
electioneer for that office, by advocating the forraation of such
a party, and not see the raantling cup of honors, to which they
are reaching, dashed to their feet by the indignation of the
whole country — it is because this experiraent is making to
day, that we feel that we have a duty to do. Who of us
knows that it is not his last civil labor ? Who of us does not
feel that if it were so, our noblest labor were our last ? Were
it even so, what signifies it whether we personally and politi
cally sink or swira — live or die — survive or perish ! Would
not that be a bright page wherein the historian, after having
recorded in the forraer chapters of his book the long antece
dents of the Whigs, — that they held the government of this
good old State, with sraall exception, for a quarter of a cen
tury ; that they held it long enough to erabody their politics
in official state papers; on the statute book; in public speech;
through their accredited press ; in the prevailing tone and
maxims of public life ; long enough to see those politics bear
rich, practical autumnal fruits ; that whUe they held power, pop
ular education was iraproved ; the instrumentalities of inter
course of all parts of the State with each other, and with the
States beyond, were multiplied and perfected, and the universal
industrial prosperity of the people advanced by the reforming
hand, reforming wisely ; that the sentiraent of obedience to
law, popular or unpopular, while law, of observance of order,

332 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of the supremacy of the national Constitution, within its limits
over the State, and of the State constitution over the legisla
ture ; of the practicability and the necessity of reconcUing and
performing all political duties, not one, nor half, but all, —
that this sentiraent was taught and was practised ; that liberty
of conscience was held sacred ; that the right to be represented
equally in the government of the State was recognized, and
sought to be retained in the Constitution as belonging to
every human being, because such, inhabiting her soil ; that
they held eveu good laws powerless, and a governraent of
laws irapossible, if not interpreted and administered by judges
as impartial as the lot of humanity will adrait, and helped to
be so by the tenure of independence of the ebb and flow of
party; that although ever they boasted to be a branch of a
national Whig connection, and as such, held a creed of national
politics, corabining a policy of peace with honor, industry pro
tected by wise discrimination, improvement of the great nat
ural agencies of intercourse, a provident and liberal and states
manlike administration of the public domain, — a creed on
which wise and good raen of every State, in large nurabers,
sometimes by large majorities, were with thera ; although they
held this creed of union, they yet left theraselves wholly free
to cherish and act on the local sentiraent of slavery ; that they
opposed its extension by their press, by their vote, by public
debate — its extension by annexation of Texas and Cuba, and
by repeal of the comproraise, and that their greatest and best,
aU who represented thera, did so ever up to the liraits of the
Constitution and an honest statesraanship, and paused reveren
tially there ; — would it not be a glorious page on which, after
concluding this detail, he should record that their last organic
act was to raeet the dark wave of this tide of sectionalisra on
the strand, breast high, and roll it back upon its depths ; aye,
or to be buried under it ! Would not that be higher than to
follow the advice of one, once of us, who counsels the Whigs
to raarch out of the field with all the honors ? Yes, we reject
the word of coraraand. We wiU not raarch out of the field at
all. We will stand just where we are, and defend those hon
ors and add to thera. Perhaps we may faU. That were
better than the flight he advises ; to fall, and let our recorded
honors thicken on our graves. That were better than flight ;

SPEECH IN FANEUH. HALL. 333
but who can tell that there are not others higher to be won
yet? Laurels farther up ; raore precious — less perishing ; to
be won by more heroic civil duty, and the austerer glory of
more self-sacrifice. Be these ungathered laurels ours to reap !
But it occurs to' rae, that I have been a little too fast in
assuming that your minds are already all made up not to join
this geographical party. Let us then pause, and inspect the
thing a little. Let us do it under a threefold dissection. See
then, first, exactly what it is to be ; what, if completely forraed,
it is to be. Second, what good it will do. And, third, what
evil it will do ; what evil the process of forraing it will do ;
what evil it wUl do after it is formed. First, what is it to be,
when forraed ? Exactly an organization of all the people of the
free States, if they can get all, if not, raajorities of all, into a
political party proper, to oppose the whole people of all the
slave States, organized into just such another association upon
the single, but broad and fertile topic of slavery. Into this or
ganization, on one side and the other, every other party is, if
possible, to be merged ; certainly by this one, every other is to
be out-voted aud vanquished. This proraising and happy con
suraraation, raark you, is to be a political party proper. It
is not to be a public opinion on slavery. It is not to be a pub
lic opinion against slavery. It is not to be a raere universal
personal conviction of every raan which he raay carry with hira
into all his political duties and relations, and bind up with his
Democratic opinions, or Whig opinions, or Native American
opinions ; — that is not it, at all. It is to be, and act, as a po
litical party properly, technicaUy, and with tremendous emphasis
so caUed. It is to fill office, make laws, govern great States,
govern the nation ; and to do this by the one single test of
what is called opposition to slavery ; on the one single impulse
of hate and dread of the aristocracy of the South, by which
slavery is maintained. To carry out this opposition, to breathe
forth this hate, and this dread in action, it lives ; it holds its
conventions, supports its press, selects its candidates, prescribes
their creed, conducts its electioneering, and directs every act
that it does and every word that it speaks. And now, when
you consider how prodigious an agency in a republic a flushed
and powerful party is at the best ; when you remember what
it has done to shame and scare away liberty from her loved

334 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
haunts and horae by the blue JEgeau, or beneath the sunny
skies of Italy ; when you consider how party, as the general
fact, is sure to forra and guide that public opinion which rules
the world ; how it grows to be " the raadness of the raany for
the benefit of the few ;" when you consider ftiat to win or retain
the general voice, all the ability this organization can possibly
coraraand will be enlisted and paid ; that it will offer office to
the ambitious, spoils to the greedy, the dear, delicious indul
gence of his one single idea to the zealot, strong in faith, fierce
and narrow in his creed ; to the sentimentalist and litterateur,
the corrupting praise of a foreign press ; to a distempered and
unraeaning philanthropy, the cure of one evil by the creation of
ten thousand ; — raeditating on these things, you attain to some
conception of what this party is to be.
And now, what good is it to do ? And first, what on
earth is it going to do, anyhow ? It is forraed, we will say.
It has triumphed. It has got power in the free States. It
has got the general governraent. It has chosen its president.
It has got a majority in both houses of congress. The minor
ity are a body of representatives of slaveholders. And they
have raet in the great charabers. What to do ? Now, it is
agreed, on all hands, that in regard to what they are to do as a
party, on any subject, huraan or divine, outside of slavery, we
know no raore than if they were so raany raen let down in so
raany baskets frora the clouds. Asa party, — and they gained
power as a party, they are to rule us as a party; — but as a party
they soleranly adjure that they hold no opinion on anything
whatever, on anything but slavery. They spread their arras
wide open to every huraor of the huraan mind; to all the forms
of sense and nonsense ; to more irreconcilable and belligerent
tempers and politics than ever quarrelled in a menagerie ; to
men of war and men of peace ; to the friend of annexation, if
he can find free soil to annex, as you may, in Canada, and the
eneray of any raore area ; to protectionists and free traders ;
raen of strict, and men of large construction, and men of no
construction at all ; teraperance raen and anti-teinperance men;
the advocate of ten hours of labor, the advocate of twelve, — in
short, they raake a general bid for every opinion on everything,
with the pledge of the party to each and all, that if they will
roar with a coraraon consent, and make a satisfactory hullabor

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 335
ho on slavery, every man of thera shall have a fair chance, and
no privilege, and everybody may enact everything, if he can.
And now, in the name of all comraon sense, in the whole
history of elective governraent, was a free people ever called on
to coramit power, the whole vast enginery, the whole thunder
of the State, to such a ruler as this ! Slavery, they do say,
they will oppose, right and left ; but what other one maxim of
government they will adopt, state or national ; what one law,
on what one subject, they will pass ; what one institution, or
one policy of the fathers they will spare ; what one sentiment
they will inculcate ; what one glory they will prize ; what of all
that government can cause or cure, they will cause or cure or
try to — we have no more to guide us than if they were an
encarapraent of a race never seen before, poured by sorae pop
ulous and unknown North, from her frozen loins ! How mad,
how contemptible to deliver ourselves over to such a veiled
enthusiast as this ! Better the urn and the lot of Solon — bet
ter the fantastic chances of hereditary descent, a thousand fold.
Well, on their one single specialty of slavery^ what are they
going to do ? And I say that we have not one particle raore
of evidence, what specific thing, or what thing in general they
mean to do on slavery, than on anything else. I do say this,
however, that those honest men, who, in the siraplicity of their
hearts, have syrapathized with this new party in the hope of
having the Missouri Comproraise restored, have not one parti
cle of assurance tbat they would do it if they could ; or that if
they could, they would rest there, or within half the globe of
it. Loud they are in their reprobation of the repeal. So are
we all ! But is it a restoration they seek ? No, nothing so
little. When, a few days ago, a respectable Whig gentle
man presented hiraself at one of their raeetings, and being
invited to speak, began by saying that they were all there to
unite for the repeal of the repeal, they hissed him incontinently.
Less discourteously in the manner of it, quite as unequivocally
they have set forth in terras the raost explicit, in the address of
their convention, that the restoration ofthe Coraproraise of 1820
is not what they desire. What are they to do, then, if they win
power ? Either nothing at all which Whigs could not do, and
would not do, if a wise and large statesraanship permit it ; or
they bring on a conflict which separates the States. Nothing

336 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
at all which we would not do, if our fidelity to the Constitution
would allow us, or that which under the Constitution cannot be
done. Nothing at all, or just what their agitation from 1 835
to this hour, has accomplished, — rivet the iron chains of the
slave, loose the golden bands of the Union. So much for the
good it will do.
But now survey the evil it would do. We cannot, of course,
foreknow exactly what it would do, if it could, nor how much,
exactly, it could do, if it would. We cannot know, in other
words, exactly where or when or how, if it attained the whole
power that it seeks, it would bring on the final strife. But
one thing we know, that they cannot, by possibility, go through
the process of merely and completely organizing such a party
but by elaborately and carefully training the raen on this side
of their line to "abhor" and "avoid" the raen on the other.
The basis of the organization is reciprocal sectional hate. This
is the sentiraent at bottom. This, and nothing else. To forra
and heighten this ; to fortify and justify it ; to show that it is
moral and necessary, and brave, the whole vast enginery of
party tactics is to be put in request. If the ingenuity of hell
were tasked for a device to alienate and rend asunder our im-
raature and artificial nationality, it could devise nothing so
effectual ! *
I take ray stand here ! I resist and deprecate the mere at
terapt to form the party. I don't expect to live to see it succeed
in its grasp at power. I ara sure I hope I shall not, but I see
the attempt making. I think I see the dreadful influence of
such an attempt. That influence I would expose. Woe ! woe !
to the sower of such seed as this ! It raay perish where it falls.
The God of our fathers may withhold the early and latter rain
and the dew, and the grain may die ; but woe to the hand that
dares to scatter it.
Painful it is to see some of whora a higher hope might have
been cherished, on raotives and with views I dare say satis
factory to themselves, giving aid and comfort to such a thing.
In looking anxiously out of my own absolute retirement from
every forra of public life, to observe how the raovers of this
new party mean to urge it upon the people, what topics they
mean to employ, what airas they raean to propose, and, above
all, what tone and spirit they raean to breathe and spread, and

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 337
what influence to exert on the sectional passions or the national
sentiments of our country — I have had occasion to read sorae
thing of their spoken and written exhortations — this inaugu
ration eloquence of sectionalism — and think I comprehend it.
And what work do they make of it ? Yes — what ? With
what impression of your country, your whole country — that
is the true test of a party platform and a party appeal — do
you rise frora listening to the preachers of this new faith ?
What lesson of duty to all, and of the clairas of all, and of love
to all, has it taught you ? Does not our Araerica seem to lose
her forra, her color, her vesture, as you read ? Does not the
magic of the metamorphosis come on her ?
" Her spirits faint.
Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,
And scarce her form remains."
Does it not seem as if one half of the raap were blotted out
or rolled up forever frora your eye ? Are you not looking
with perplexity and pain, your spirits as in a dream all bound
up, upon a different, another, and a smaller native land ?
Where do you find in this body of discourse one single recol
lection that North and South corapose a coraraon country, to
which our raost pious affections are due, and our whole service
engaged ? Where, beneath this logic and this rhetoric of sec
tionalism, do you feel one throb of a heart capacious of our
whole America ? The deep, full, burning tide of American
feeling, so hard to counterfeit, so hard to chill, does it once
gladden and glorify this inauguration oratory and these inau
guration cereraonies ? Is not the key-note of it all, that the
slaveholders ofthe South are an aristocracy to be " abhorred "
and "avoided;" that they are insidious and dangerous ; that
they are underraining our republic, and are at all hazards to be
resisted ? Do they not inaugurate the new party on the basis
of reciprocal hate and reciprocal fear of section to section ?
Hear the sharp and stern logic of one of these orators : —
" Aristocracy, through all hazards is to be abhorred and
avoided. But a privileged class are sure to becorae, nay, are
an aristocracy already. The local Southern law, and the na
tional Constitution, raake the slaveholders a privileged class.
They are, therefore, an aristocracy to be abhorred and avoided."
Such is the piercing key-note of his speech. To this he sets
VOL. n. 29

338 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
his whole music of discord. To this he would set the whole
music of the next presidential canvass. To this, the tens of
thousands of the free States are to raarch. " Abhor " and
" avoid " the aristocracy of the South ! Organize to do it the
better ! They are insidious and dangerous. They are under
mining republican liberty. March to defend it ! Aye, march,
were it over the burning marl, or by the light which the toss
ing wave of the lake casts pale and dreadful.
" I raight show," the sarae orator proceeds, " that the Con
stitution is wrong in thus conceding to a privUeged class. I
raight show, a priori, that such a class would be dangerous.
I choose rather to teach you so to read the history of Araerica,
that you shall find its one great lesson will be hatred and dread
of the aristocracy of the South, for its conduct even raore than
for its privileges." And so he unrolls the raap, and opens the
record. He traces the miraculous story ; he traces the mirac
ulous growth from the birthday of the Constitution, and frora
the straitened raargin of the old thirteen States, through all
the series of expansion, — the acquisition of Louisiana, and the
adoptign of that State into the Union ; the successive adoption,
also, of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabaraa and Mis
souri ; the annexation of Florida and Texas, and California, — ¦
a growth in fifty years, from a narrow heritage between the
Atlantic and Alleghany, and the spring-heads of the Con
necticut and the raouth of the St. Mary's in Georgia, to the
diraensions of Roman, of Russian, of Asiatic boundlessness —
this he traces across the Alleghanies, across the imperial val
ley and the Father of Rivers, through the opened portals of the
Rocky Mountains to the shores of the great tranquil sea —
aye, and beyond these shores to richer dorainion over the cora
raerce of the East, to which it opens a new and nearer way —
this raajestic series, our glory, our sharae, he runs over ; and
the one single lesson he gathers and preaches from it is, that
the aristocracy of the South is as insidious and dangerous and
undermining in practice as it is threatening a priori ; that we
should " abhor " and " avoid " it, for what it has done, as well
as for what the Constitution and the laws secure to it. This
is the lesson of the History of Araerica. As he studies the
map and reads the history, so is the new party to do it ; so are
the fathers, and so are the children of the free States aU to read

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 339
it ; it is to teach thera all one dull lesson, and to sound in their
ears one single, dreary, and raonotonous warning. The annex
ation of Louisiana, the raaster-work of Jefferson, unless you
say the Declaration of Independence is his master-work ; the
annexation of Florida, by treaty, for which John Quincy
Adams acquired so just a fame, and which stipulates for the
incorporation of its inhabitants into the Union ; the victories
of Palo Alto, Monterey, Buena Vista, and Contreras, which
crowned the arms of America with a lustre imperishable, al
though they could not vindicate to justice and history, the ad
ministration or the politics which brought on the war, nor the
Free SoUers of New York, whose tactics caused the election
of that administration ; this expansion, so stupendous — this
motion, sUent and resistless, of all the currents of national
being towards the setting sun — ^like that of our astronomical
system itself, towards the distant constellation ; this all is to
kindle no emotion, to inspire no duty, to inculcate no truth,
but to " abhor " and " avoid " the aristocracy, whose rapacious
use or insidious fabrication of opportunity, so strikingly illus
trates the folly of the Constitution.
Oh ! how soothing and elevating to turn from this to the
meridian brightness, the descending orb, the whole clear day,
of our imraortal Webster ! How sweet, how instructive to
hang again on the lips now mute, stUl speaking, whose elo
quence, whose wisdom, were all given ever to his whole
America ! How grand to feel again the beat of the great
heart which could enfold us all ! He saw, too, and he de
plored the spread of slavery. He raarked, and he resisted the
frenzy of the politics by which the then administration gave it
so vast an impulse by annexing Texas and making war with
Mexico. He had surveyed — no raan had so deeply done it —
the growth of his country frora the rock of Plyraouth and the
peninsula of Jameston to the western sea. But did he think
it just to trace it all to the aggressive spirit of the aristocracy
who hold slaves ? Could his balanced and gigantic intelligence
and his genuine patriotism have been brought to believe and
to teach that the single desire to find a new field for slavery to
till, has in fifty years transforraed a strip of sea coast into a
national domain larger than Europe ?
Is nothing to be ascribed to the necessities of national situ-

340 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
ation and the opportunities of national glory ; nothing to the
sober, collective judgraent of the people of all the sections;
nothing to the foresight of sorae great raen — like Jefferson
and John Quincy Adaras — who loved not slavery, nor the
expansion of the area of slavery, but who did love their country
dearly and wisely, and knew that that evU would be more than
corapensated by the exceeding good ; nothing to a diffused,
veheraent nationality, brave, arabltious, conscious of a mighty
strength, burning to try itself against the resistance of foreign
contact, and finding on its West and" South-west border no equal
force to hold it back ; nothing to the blindness of raere party
tactics and the power of a popular adrainistration ; nothing to
the love of glory, and contention, and danger which flaraes
and revels in the adolescent national heart ? Is it all mere
and sheer negro-breeding and negro-selling that has done
this ? More. Is nothing to be ascribed to the influence of
Northern aggression against slavery, provoking by an eternal
law a Southern rally for its defence and propagation ? Have
these great readers of our history forgotten that as far back
as 1805, as 1801, the press, some influential portions of the
press of a large political party at the North, began to denounce
the election and reelection of Jefferson as a triuraph of the
slave power ; the acquisition of Louisiana, that absolute
necessity of our peace, how rauch more of our greatness, as
another triumph of the slave power ; that this form of section
alism already assailed the slave representation of the Constitu
tion, and tried to strike it out ; that it bore its part, a large
part, in inflaming New England to the measure of the Hart
ford Convention ; that, hushed to silence by the fervid flood of
nationality which swept the country at the close of a war,
breathing into us the full first inspiration of Araerican life, it
awoke again on the application of Missouri for adraission ;
that, silenced once more by that adjustment, a few years later
it took on the raore virulent type of abolitionism ; and from
that moment, helped on by the general progress of the age, it
has never ceased for an hour to make war on the institutions
of the South, to assaU the motives, and arraign the conscience
of the slave-holder ; to teach to "abhor " and to " avoid " him,
and denounce the Union as a compact with heU ? Is it not
possible that a part of what they call the aggressive spirit of

SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL. 34,1
slavery raay be reaction against our own aggression ? May it
not be, that in this recrimination of the sections, and in the
judgment of history, there raay be blows to take as well as
blows to give ? That great raan whose narae I have spoken,
could see, and he dared to adrait, the errors of both sections.
In those errors, in this very hate and this very dread which
the new party would organize, he saw the suprerae danger of
his country. To correct those errors, to allay that dread, to
turn that hate to love, was the sublirae aim of his last and
noblest labor. " I am looking out," he said, "not for my own
security or safety, for I ara looking out for no fragraent on
which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be,
but for the good of the whole, and the preservation of all. I
speak to-day for the Union ! Hear me, for my cause ! " He
could not have abandoned himself, he never saw an hour in
which he could have any more abandoned himself to this
gloomy enterprise of sectionalisra, than Washington could have
done it, stooping frora the pathos and grandeur and parental
love of the Farewell Address ; than the leader of Israel could
have done it, as he stood in that last hour on Pisgah and sur
veyed in vision, the wide-spread tents of the kindred tribes,
rejoicing together in the peace and in the light of their na
tion's God. O, for an hour of such a life, and all were not
yet lost.

29*

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS.

[The following history of the case is taken mainly from the " Monthly
Law Reporter " : —
At a nisi prius term of the Supreme Court of Maine, held within and
for the county of Cumberland, in January, 1856, by the Hon. Woodbury
Davis, a question arose which of two persons claiming the oflSce was the
lawful sheriff of the county. Mr. Seward M. Baker was in occupation of
the office under an old commission, which, by its terms, had not expired,
and did the duties of sheriff during the first week of the term. At the end
of the week, Mr. Daniel C. Emery and his counsel called upon Judge
Davis at his chambers, and informed him that Mr. Emery had received a
commission and quahfied under it, and should claim the right to perform
the duties of sheriff, on Monday. Judge Davis expressed his wish that
the case should be presented to tbe full bench, and his reluctance to pass
upon it at nisi prius ; but Mr. Emery and his counsel thought proper to
present the question to the judge, and it was understood that it would be
so presented on Monday morning. Accordingly, on Monday, January
21st, Mr. Emery appeared in court, presented his commission, and his
claim to this office was argued by Judge Ploward and the Hon. Nathan
Clifford in his behalf. They contended that the executive had the right
to remove the incumbent and appoint a new sheriff, and that the judge
must, from the necessity of the case, pass upon the question. At the
close of their arguments, no argument being made in behalf of the incum
bent. Judge Davis, alluding to the newness of his own position on the bench,
and the longer professional experience of several members of the bar
present, invited suggestions from the bar. His invitation was responded
to by Hon. Samuel Fessenden, who controverted the positions of Mr.
Emery's counsel, and contended that the governor had no power, under
the amended constitution, to make the removal and appointment in ques
tion. The doubt arose upon the effect of ah amendment of the constitu
tion, recently adopted by the people. Before the amendment, sheriffs
were appointed and removed by the governor. The amendment made
them elective, and expressly took away the power of appointment from
the governor, except in case of vacancies. The time for an election had
not arrived. It was urged on behalf of Mr. Emery, that the amendment,
though adopted by the people, and passed upon by the governor and

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 34,3
council, had not become a part of the constitution when the governor
issued the commission. And, if it had become a part of the constitution,
yet, as the time for an election had not arrived, and no officer had been
elected, the effect of the adoption of the amendment was either to create
a vacancy at once, or to leave the offlcers under the power of the execu
tive as before, until the election. It was replied that the amendment was
in full operation when the governor issued the new commission, and that
he could not, under that araendmentj create "a vacancy" within the
meaning of the amendment, by merely issuing a new commission ; and
that the adoption of the amendment did not of itself create vacancies in
the offices it affected, but left the old commissions alive until the new offi
cers should be elected, and in terms took from him the appointing power,
except in those cases. There was no question of fact in issue between
the parties, and Judge Davis, after' expressing his regret that the ques
tion came before him suddenly, at nisi prius, and not in banc, admitted
the necessity he was under, from the nature of the case, to determine
which of the two claimants he should recognize as sheriff, and gave his
decision in favor of the incumbent, Mr. Baker. He limited his decision
within the closest possible bounds, deciding only that he should, under the
present circumstances, as at present advised, recognize and employ the
incumbent as the lawful sheriff for the purposes of the court, and ex
pressly refusing to pass upon the general question of title and the validity
of the commission, beyond that. No opposition was offered to this decision,
no appeal taken, and no steps to bring the question before the full bench,
by mandamus, quo warranto, or otherwise.
The March term of the court for the same county, for criminal trials,
was held by Judge Davis. In the interval, Mr. Emery obtained posses
sion of the jail by force, and appointed a keeper of the prisoners. When
it became necessary for the prisoners to be produced, on raotion of the
county attorney, the judge, in the usual manner, sent an officer in attend
ance, with verbal orders to have the prisoners produced. The keeper
refused to obey the order, and the judge then issued a capias to an officer,
commanding him to bring the prisoners, and directing the keeper of the
jail to deliver them to him. This precept the keeper complied with, and
no further difficulty arose during the term.
The legislature of Maine assembled soon after ; and on the 19th day
of March, the senate passed substantially the following resolves : —
Resolved, That the senate will proceed to consider the adoption of an ad
dress to the governor, for the removal of Woodbury Davis, one of the justices
ofthe Supreme Judicial Court, for the causes following:
Because the said Davis has refused to recognize Daniel C. Emery as the
sheriff of Cumberland County :
Because the said Davis, in his capacity of judge, denied the validity of the
commission issued to Daniel C. Emery :
• Because the said Davis removed by unlawful proceeding certain prisoners
from jail then in the custody of Emery :
Becanse the said Davis has recognized as the sheriff of said county another
person who had before been lawfully removed from that office, and has under
taken to, issue the orders of the said court, to be executed by the person who
has been so removed from office :
Because the continuance of such acts, proceedings, and assumptions of the

344 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
said Woodbury Davis tends to produce insubordination, confusion, and violence ;
is of dangerous and pernicious example ; confounds the distribution of the
powers of government ; and tends to the subversion of the actual, constituted,
and lawful authority of the State.
The constitution of Maine contains the following provision, (Art. ix.
sec. 5,) under which these proceedings were had :
" Every person holding any civil office under this State, may be removed, by
impeachment, for misdemeanor in office ; and every person holding any office
may be removed by the governor, with the advice of the council, on the address
of both branches of the legislature. But, before any such address shall pass
either house, the causes of removal shall be entered on the journal of the house
in which it originated, and a copy thereof served on the person in office, that
he may be admitted to a hearing in his defence." t
The above constitute, it is believed, all the facts necessary to a full
understanding of Mr. Choate's argument in this case, which was pro
nounced by very eminent authority as " a valuable addition to the consti
tutional literature of America, and one that will fully sustain Mr. Choate's
great reputation as a jurist, orator, and scholar."
After the close of Mr. Choate's argument the Convention dissolved.
The address on the subject was carried in the senate by a vote of
twenty-five to three ; and in the house by a vote of eighty-one to sixty,
nearly or quite a party vote, as we have been informed, in both places.
Fifty-nine members of the house offered a protest against the address,
which the house refused to receive.
It is proper to add, that the legislature which removed Judge Davis
also abolished his office, probably for the purpose of clinching the re
moval. It had this effect for a time, for the Supreme Court, finding that
there was no question between different claimants for the office, did not
think it necessary to pass upon the general questions involved in the ac
tion of the other branches of the government. But it also left an easy
way of redress ; for the legislature of 1857 happening to differ in politics
from their predecessors, renewed the office ; and Judge Davis was
appointed to fill it.] «

Mr. President, —
I cannot permit myself to proceed a step in this discussion,
until I have relieved ray heart, by the warraest expression of
thanks to you and to this Convention, for your kindness to rae
personally. That kindness has not restored rae to perfect
health, but it has irapressed rae with a sense of gratitude and
obligation, which neither sickness nor health will ever efface
or abate.
It will at the sarae tirae occur to you that I ara placed un
der sorae peculiar erabarrassraent, frora not having had the
pleasure and help of listening to the arguments of ray associ
ated counsel, which are represented from all sources to have

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 345
been powerful and instructive. I incur the double hazard of
seeming, by the oraission of topics which they have treated, to
disallow their importance ; and by the repetition of arguments
which they have advanced, to irapair their strength. Pru
dence, therefore, and good taste, prescribe that I confine rayself
to a few suppleraentary suggestions, abstaining frora that
elaborate and coraplete discussion which the stage of the debate
and personal considerations alike discourage.
If the case of Judge Davis had seeraed to depend in any
considerable degree, on any question of local law or local
policy, of this great State, I should have thought it presurap-
tiious in rae to appear for hira, and would not have as
sumed to do so. In every view, it raay be raatter of regret
to hira, as well as to me, that my place is not held by some
one of this full and able bar, whose learning and eloquence
have been already so admirably represented here ; and by some
one of a recognized personal authority in the counsels of the
people of Maine. But, Sir, it is impossible not to see, that the
deliberation in which you are engaged, turns, in one of its
aspects at least, on a deep and general question, in regard to
which there can scarcely be, under the written constitutions of
our country, such a thing as a local law or a local policy at all,
and for the discussion of which no specific and local training or
studies, are deraanded or furnished anywhere. It is true the
cause is here. The high forura is here. The judge whose
official life, hopes, and honor are raenaced ; the judge, through
whom the independence of all judges — through whom the
power of a coordinate departraent — suprerae within its sphere,
under your constitution, and all written constitutions, and all
unwritten constitutions, pretending to be free and wise —
through whora that power is raenaced — he is here. It is
your fundaraental law, and your amendments of tbat law, and
your statutes, and your legislative practice, that are iraraedi
ately to be interpreted and applied. The topics, the responsi
bilities, the first results, are here. This is true, certainly.
But yet the great first question on which this whole deliber
ation turns, or one which in one decisive aspect it turns,' is an
American question, and not a question of local law at all. It
is one on which the presuraption is absolutely conclusive in
advance, that the doctrines of every State — preeminently so of

1
346 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
such a State as this — will be found to be in conforraity with
a general and a grand Araerican doctrine of law and liberty,
old as any of our written constitutions, recognized by the
terras and by the practical interpretations of every one of thera
in all periods — a doctrine, not one thing in Maine and another
in Massachusetts ; one thing in New York and another in
South Carolina, and another in Ohio ; not so — nor one to-day
and another to-raorrow ; but a doctrine of Araerican law and
liberty, properly and exactly so denorainated — corabining and
reconciling security with liberty — maintained through all our
history ; pervading our whole systera ; held sacred in all trans
ports of popular exciteraent ; adopted and cherished in every
coramonwealth which under its local symbol owns the Union
flag — the boast, and the safety of all alike. On such a ques
tion we ought all to feel ourselves at home, before any judicial
forum, and at the higher bar of any legislature — even this.
And what is this larger, first question ? I state it thus : —
With what specific purpose, and under what limitations have
the people of Maine given to the legislature the power to re
raove, or to cause and cooperate in the reraoval, by address, of
a judge of their highest judicial tribunal ; and are you now
about to use that power as they intended and expected it to be
used when they gave it ? Did they raean to authorize their
agents and servants of one department — the legislature, or the
legislature and governor — to reraove their agents and servants
of another departraent — a judge or a bench of judges — ad
mitted to be honest — adraitted to be corapetent — for the
single reason that in a case regularly before him or them, he
or they formed and expressed an opinion on the interpretation
of the constitution and a statute, (the interpretation of which
belongs exclusively to the judge,) differing from the opinion
entertained by you ? Did the people give you the power to
reraove for such diff'erence of opinion on the sense of the writ
ten law ? Did they mean by this power of removal, after hav
ing distributed the functions of government among three
classes of servants, and ordained for the well-being of the
State, that one of these, the judiciary, shall, and the two
others, legislative and executive, shall not, conclusively construe
the constitution and the sta:tute — did they mean, by the grant
of this power, to say that you and the governor may punish.

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 34,7
by deprivation of office, the judge for doing exactly what he is
authorized to do, aud you are not authorized to do — simply
because you dislike the construction he makes ? Did they mean
to say that under this power, the legislature and the governor
— for the sole and palpable purpose of making the judge utter
your judgments and not his own, on a question uhich the
people, by this same constitution, commits exclusively to his
judgment, for this precise and only purpose — may remove
him ? Did they mean to authorize you to supersede and ab
sorb the practical functions of a whole departraent, which they
have carefully established under the conviction that its exist
ence and its independence of you, and its free and full action,
were just as needful as your own ? Was this their meaning ;
or did they intend that this power should be held and used in
harraony with, and in trust for the whole constitution ; that is
to say, for the reraoval of the corrupt aud incapable judge,
found such after trial, upon written charges, and a hearing in
his defence ? This is the question, the ends, the purpose and
limitations intended by the people of Maine. And I believe I
only do this State the justice she may demand of all men, and
pay her the respect which all ought to feel, when I assume
that in framing this clause, she just intended to stand where
aU our States have stood ; to stand where Massachusetts stood
when she was of her, — to so large a degree her ornament,
pride, and strength. How the people of America have an
swered this question, in other words, for what exact objects,
and with what precise limitations they have given this power
of reraoval, is hereafter to be exarained. Thus far I have said
only that it is one of general constitutional jurisprudence, and
not of local law ; and I find iu this my apology for presuming
to discuss it here.
Mr. President, have I not stated the question before you
exactly as it arises ? Am I not warranted in saying that the
precise and the single reason on which you are moved to dis
place this judge, is that — adraitted to be honest, and admitted
to be competent — he has put a judicial interpretation on a
statute and on the constitution, which you think erroneous ?
And if so, is it not the true and sole inquiry, did the people
mean to give you the power to do such an act, for such a cause ?
Sir,' who comes to accuse Judge Davis of anything else ? The

348 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
causes of the proposed removal, your constitution requires to be
stated of record, that he raay defend to thera. Here they are.
And do they allege dishonesty or incompetency? Do they
allege any one dishonest act ? Do they allege any one act as
evidencing dishonesty or incompetency? Do they ascribe his act
as being or as proving corruption or unfitness ? Nothing like
it. No, Sir. These charges, these causes, whatever they are,
tacitly admit hira to be upright, capable, of pure intentions ; in
this very judgment conscientious ; in this very judgment hon
estly in error only. If they intended, if they dared to breathe
or inspire a doubt or suspicion of his integrity, his learning,
his capacity, they were bound by the constitution to do so clear
ly, certainly, and boldly, that he might have given the scandal
to the winds. There is no such charge, and there is no such
insinuation. Honest error of opinion, that is the whole. "The
head and front of his offending hath this extent, no raore."
Does this record say he did not take pains enough — all the
pains he could — to find the truth ? No. Does it say the
question was not a difficult one ? No. Does it say that it was
so clear and easy that his alleged mistake proves bad faith, or
weakness, or ignorance ? Not a word of it. Is it even pre
tended that he had seen the opinion of the Massachusetts judges,
although in that opinion there is nothing whatever that should
have changed his own ? No. The charge is, that he did a
certain act in direct course of judicial duties; a duty he would
gladly have postponed ; a duty forced on him ; founded on a
judicial opinion of the constitution and the statute ; right, if
that opinion was right : wrong, if that opinion was erroneous ;
but if a mistake, the raistake of a learned and able mind, after
a conscientious search for truth, concerning the sense of a writ
ten law.
" I should be asharaed of myself," a great judge soraewhere
says, " if to a question of coraraon law I could not answer
without taking tirae to reflect. I should be equally asharaed
of myself if to a question of statute law I did not take time to
answer." Time to answer was not given to Judge Davis. He was
coerced into an immediate decision ; and because some of you,
and sorae elsewhere, think it erroneous, they demand his re
moval. That his decision was right, I entirely beUeve ; that it

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 349
was conscientious, and that in no raan's judgraent it proves un
fitness, his accusers on this record and these proofs adrait.
Two or three allegations, or intimations, there are among
the charges, which may require a reraark ; and which the facts
now before you completely dispose of He assumes, it is sug
gested, without any legal issue raised, and without judicial trial,
to pronounce upon the coraparative validity of these two cora
peting sheriffs' coraraissions. Sir, if this means raerely that
the question was not before hira on a quo warranto, or raanda-
raus, or an action on a sheriff's bond, it is true, although it is
nothing to the purpose. But if it means to deny that without
procurement or connivance by hira, against his wishes, against
his recoraraendation, an issue was practically and regularly
made up, and pending before him, and forced upon him, which
it was indispensable for him to try at once, for the purpose of
securing due and orderly proceeding in court, — as much so as
if a person should present hiraself at this moraent and claim to
preside over this Convention, — if this record means to deny
this, it is not true, and it is completely disproved by the evi
dence now before you. By that evidence you now know, that
when the counsel of the last-commissioned sheriff gave hira
notice that he should appear with his client in court, and claira
that he be declared and recognized as sheriff by the judge,
he urged, as far as decorum and judicial self-respect would
perrait hira to do it, or perrait any honest, prudent, and firra
judge to do it, that a question so delicate, possibly difficult, to
his reflections as yet wholly new, should be presented at once
to the whole court. He expressed his desire to facilitate this,
and indicated the way to do it legally and proraptly. You
know that this suggestion was wholly disregarded ; and that
the deterraination to press the issue on hira, had been, for some
reason and on some policy, deliberately adopted, and was stren
uously persisted in. You know that thereupon two persons
carae in open court, before the judge, and each then and there
unrolled his coraraission, and made public claira, and deraanded
instant possession of an office in its nature indivisible. One
only could have it. One raust have it. One was entitled to
it, and was entitled to it at once. For the preservation of order
in cpurt ; for the due, accustomed, and decent conduct of its
business ; to protect its justice from obstruction, and itself frora
VOL. II. 30

350 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
conterapt; it becarae necessary to decide at once in sorae way,
on sorae ground, and to sorae extent, which one should be
deemed the sheriff. To say upon these facts now established
conclusively, that au issue, in a strict sense, was not raised, —
so raised and so presented that the judge not only legally might
try it, but could not possibly escape trying it, — is to speak
unintelligibly, or to speak absurdly. That he raust decide, for
the term, and for the place, who was to be deemed sheriff, you
all agree. But by what principle raust he decide it ? Was he
to do it piously by lot ? Was he cunningly to take the highest
on the alphabet ? Was he to enact judicial corruption, or ju
dicial cowardice, and to mask thera under maxims of the law,
arbitrary and inapplicable, and resorted to insincerely to enable
hiraself to evade his duty ? Was he to say, first in tirae is first
in right, and therefore I continue the old sheriff; or to say, the
last wiU is ever the true wUl, and therefore I adrait the new
one ? Or was he to decide like an honest man, and a consci
entious and courageous judge, that he was the true sheriff in
his court whom the law of the land declared to be the true
sheriff; and thereupon address himself, in the fear of God, to
learn what was that law in that behalf ? How can two opinions
be held on such a subject ? Each party was before him, as
serting his legal rights. Each opened and pleaded his own
coraraission. The last one had the prima facie advantage of
being the last ; but when the holder of the first alleged against
this, that the people of Maine had, by an amendraent of their
constitution, withdrawn from their governor the legal authority
to issue it, and to prove the allegation, cited to the judge the
amendraent and the statute under which the people had voted
on it, and urged as a conclusion of law, on that statute and
that amendraent, that the executive authority was withdrawn
upon a day certain, and that before the date of the last corarais
sion — could the judge refuse to hear the allegation, and to try
its soundness ? Could he say, — this court, especiaUy at nisi
prius, knows nothing of the people ; it knows nothing of the
constitution ; it only knows who is governor, and what he wiUs;
and what he wills the court obeys, constitution or no constitu
tion ? Could he say this ? But if not, then the question of
constitutional and statute law was cast directly on hira. He
must decide it to restore order to his court; and woe unto him.

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. S51
or any judge, if he had not decided the question according to
his conscience. So much to the suggestion that no issue was
before him. On the peculiar position and duties of a single
judge at nisi prius, I have raore to say hereafter.
I find in these charges an allegation or a suggestion that
certain consequences of disorder and insubordination have fol
lowed his decision. But, Sir, the character and quality of his
official act in raaking the decision, are not in the least degree
dependent upon these consequences, whatever they have been.
The act is not to be judged by the consequences. Does this
accusation assert that he foresaw thera ? Certainly not. Does
it assert that he ought, in the exercise of a sound discretion, to
have foreseen thera ? Certainly not. Does it assert that not
to have foreseen them evinces incompetency ? Nothing like it.
With what justice, then, are they paraded and aggravated, as
if he had been intentionally or rashly and responsibly their au
thor ! If a party to a suit, urged to madness by an unantici
pated and unfavorable decision, conscientiously pronounced,
goes out and hangs hiraself, is the judge his murderer ? That
some acts of irregularity and even violence have occurred may
be adraitted. You know better than I can presurae to do,
how that is. By whora they have ,been done, under what coun
sels, with what policy, you know or you can learn. Who is to
answer for thera, the people of Maine will decide as becoraes
their wisdora and their justice. That Judge Davis has set an
example of insubordination, even undesignedly, it is idle to pre
tend. That any part of his conduct in this whole business has
had, in the least degree, a tendency to weaken in the breast of
such a coraraunity as this, that accustomed, fond, and rational
sentiraent of obedience to law, and honor to raagistrates and
magistracy, which is the characteristic and pride of New Eng
land, there is no proof and no probability. Whoever is respon
sible, he is not. Who believes — who so slanders this people
as to say he believes — that the spectacle of a judge, representing
the judiciary of Maine in that act, and for that time, — as al
ways does the judge at nisi prius, in the performance of every
official work regularly devolved on hira, — the spectacle of such
a judge, anxiously inquiring for the truth, and calraly and dec
orously declaring it ; of a judge, who in a sharp and sudden
trial — such he felt it, — in a crisis, for hiraself, certainly, -^

SgQ MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
under rauch temptation to falter and turn aside, — remembered
that by his soleran oath, and by his high place, he was bound
to be no respecter of persons in judgraent ; that he was the
rainister and interpreter of that higher law of the constitution
which the people had set over the highest executive magistrate
as well as the humblest citizen ; that he had a duty to do, and
a God to serve by duty, rather than a man or a party to please ;
that such a spectacle as this breeds riot, and contempt of law,
and the denial of its just powers to any department of govern
raent ? To rae it seems rather a sight " soothing and beautiful
to the moral eye ;" an act which irrespective of its raere legal
correctness, "is a lesson too;" not unfitted to Uft up, and suc
cor, and animate all forms, and all service of public life, flow
far prouder for him ; how much raore nobly useful in its raere
influences on others, than a politic cowardice !
On this record of charges, then, Mr. President, no cause of
reraoval is stated, but this: — an alleged mistake in the inter
pretation of a statute and of the constitution. It is not incom
petency ; it is not corruption ; it is not bad behavior ; it is not
the absence of good behavior, in any sense which any lawyer,
or any writer, has ever yet attached to that expression. It is
only and exactly an alleged mistake, in the hurry of nisi prius,
of an honest and a corapetent judge, upon the raeaning of a
written law.
I need not say, that by this record he is to be tried. Upon
this record, you and all wUl be so too. Yet let rae add, that I
have heard from no quarter a suggestion of anything else to
his disadvantage. Let me go further, and bear witness, that
in my interviews with him, — absolute strangers before, — his
clearness of thought and expression, his good sense, his calm
ness and self-control — judicial qualities all of thera — have
created an irapression very strongly in his favor. ^ It seeraed
to rae that I recognized the judicial character and habit of raind.
It is the universal evidence that he has a true fondness for his
profession ; that he aspires, and with no unreasonable ambition
and hope, to the farae of an erainent judge ; and that in his short,
but in an unusual degree laborious, oflftcial life, he has won the
entire respect and the affectionate regard of his learned asso
ciates, and of the bar who have practised before hira. Well
may he be proud to hold a seat on that bench which the Mel-

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 353
lens, and Westons, and Shepleys have illustrated; and to
preside over a bar which reared your Wilde, and ICingj and
flolmes, and Sprague, and Orr, and Greenleaf, and Rogers, —
for time would fail me to rehearse the naraes of its living or-
naraents. God grant that that bench raay preserve its farae
by vindicating its independence ; and that it raay find in this
legislature, what in all the past time of Maine it has found here,
a constitutional auxiliary, and not an unconstitutional master !
Yes, Mr. President, I submit to you upon this record of
charges, and upon these proofs, all comes back to this. A
judge, upright, corapetent, rising in the professional and public
esteera, by circumstances which he could not control becoraes
charged with the iraraediate perforraance of an official duty.
The performance of that duty involved and deraanded the con
struction, in the first instance, of a statute and the constitution,
— the specific function for which the judge and the judiciary
exist ; and in respect of which the ultiraate judicial decision is
conclusive on everybody, and every departraent. Representing
the judiciary, as the judge at nisi prius always does, presiding
over the proceedings of his own court, with a power absolute, —
that is, for which he was responsible only to the law of the land,
— it became his duty to make this construction, so far at least as
to decide the issue prfesented, and thus preserve the order, and
direct the course of the terra. Cautiously, and with pains-taking ;
availing hiraself of all attainable opportunities of light ; request
ing further, but denied them, he made his construction ; and, just
so far as necessary to dispose of the practical question before
him, he announced it and acted on it. You think his construc
tion erroneous ; and that is his crirae ! The judges, sitting as
a whole court, have not yet reversed or revised it ; it is a ques
tion purely judicial by concession of everybody ; raany easy,
usual and constitutional modes exist for submitting it to their
review ; you reject them all : you differ from him ; and that is
his crirae ! For that exactly, and only, they move you to with
draw these honors, and cast down these hopes, and show him
forth as a warning of what a judge of your supreme court has
to fear, who dares to regard his oath as binding on his con
science, and the will of the people, spoken and recorded in their
constitution, as the supreme law of the land.
Mr, President, I hope, I expect, that Maine by her legis-
30*

354 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
lature will set no such exaraple. For a thousand years to
corae — nor yet — tUl we have reached the downward age of
our institutions and our liberty, may the sun see that sight
here, or in any State ! Looking to your own proud motto —
looking for you to direct — lead us not yet that way !
The empire State of New England ; larger than the whole
territory beside ; the democratic State — by eminence so ; full
of hearts to love liberty, and hands to defend ; you to whom
Providence has assigned the frontier of our Greece, to guard
it against the Persian, against the Macedonian ; do not you
forget that it is American liberty you watch, — liberty, whose
essence, whose end, whose boast, whose fruit is, security.
And now I am ready to resume the examination of the first
and larger question, as I have stated it, the question of the
object for which, and the liraitations under which, the people
placed this power of reraoval in the constitution ; and I main
tain with the most perfect conviction, that they never intended
by it to authorize you to reraove a judge, adraitted to be
honest, and adraitted to be corapetent, for the single reason
that you think he mistook the raeaning of a written law.
What they did intend, it is, as a general proposition, easy to
discern, and easy to state. They raeant to establish an able,
irapartial, and independent judiciary, whose function it should
be, according to the general American idea, conclusively and
finally to declare and adrainister the law ; and of course to
interpret conclusively and finaUy the constitution and statutes.
This was the kind of departraent they raeant to establish ; and
they established it to the end that the constitution itself should
at all tiraes be enforced as the permanent and supreme rule,
and that aU departraents of governraent, all raagistrates, high
or hurable, and all citizens, should obey it ; and that all raen
should find security for their rights under the law.
To attain this great end by these raeans, they introduce
three classes of provisions into the constitution. The object of
the first was to obtain the original appointment of just and
competent judges ; and therefore the appointing power is
intrusted to the governor and councU. The object of the
second was to insure that whUe these incurabents continued
just aud corapetent, they should be absolutely independent of
the other branches of the governraent ; responsible to God, to

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. $33
conscience ; in a real and effectual sense to the public judg
ment ; and responsible to no other department and to no cora
bination of departraents. And to this end, the tenure of good
behavior during the prescribed official terra was provided ; so
that whUe he continues to be of good behavior; so long as you
cannot charge on the record, and establish by proof, after hear
ing, sorae act of bad behavior — something which, in the
received and the proper sense of the language, raay be so
charged and so established — no other department, during his
prescribed official term, can touch a hair of his head.
The object of the third class of provisions was, that when he
ceased, in the received and the proper sense of that language,
to be of good behavior, and that fact could be charged and
proved on trial, he may be removed, by impeachment, if it
amounted to misdemeanor in office ; and by address, if it
did not.
In a general way, then, of stating it, the intention of the
people by the grant of this power was to enable and secure
the removal of a judge for bad behavior, not being a misde
meanor, in office, — a judge who in some way, by crime, by
intemperance, by mental imbecUity, by manifested ignorance
and incompetency, by incurable indolence, by cruelty, by cor
ruption, by loss of character, — should come to dishonor or
cumber the bench, and to bear the sword of justice in vain.
But if he is honest, competent, a conscientious seeker of truth,
of character unspotted, of gentle and dignified manner ; if his
official life hitherto has been such as to win the approval and
love of his associates, and the regard of the bar ; if all that his
accusers dare put on the record against hira ; all that they
dare suraraon hira to defend is an alleged single instance of
mistake in the interpreting of a written law, confessedly not so
clear, and in the absence of all evidence showing the least
degree of incompetence, or any other failing unbecoraing a
good judge, — in such case the people did not intend to au
thorize you to reraove him. In their sense of the language,
there is no bad behavior. And without that, they declare him
independent of you.
This, then, is my general statement of the objects and the
limitations of this power. Let it be exarained.
On a question of the objects and the liraitations of a power

356 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
contained in alraost all of our American constitutions, and on
a question whether for one decision of a good judge at nisi
prius, thought by the legislature to be erroneous, they raay
declare hira of bad behavior, and that he thenceforth holds
office, not by the tenure of independence, but at their will, —
on these questions, the general sense of our country affords
high evidence of the people of Maine. And permit me there
fore to remind you, first, that you can find no case, — no, not
one ! — in the whole history of constitutional liberty, in which
a legislature has used this power, and construed this language,
as you must use and construe it, if on this record and these
proofs you reraove this judge. I doubt if you can find a case
of an atterapt to do it. Courts have been soraetiraes abolished,
by a repeal of the law creating them. Judges have been
removed for mental imbecility. The legislature of Maine
once displaced a justice of the peace who had counterfeited
money. Incumbents of inferior and semi-judicial jurisdictions,
county coraraissioners and the like, have been displaced, too.
But for the reraoval of a judge of the highest judicial tribunal
in the State, for the single cause that he declared his own
opinion, instead of the opinion of a governor or a legislature,
on the interpretation of a law, — for this, thus far, in the
raaddest and briefest hour of party excitement, there has never
yet been found one precedent under the written constitutions of
Araerica. If gentlemen have such a precedent, will they pro
duce it ? If your raeraories or your studies supply one, will
you refer me to it here and now ? No, Sir, it is a portentous
novelty, and this alone raay well give us pause. On this
point I do not rely exclusively on my own researches. I am
able to avail rayself of the far more exact and thorough exam
ination of this branch of the question, by which Mr. Dana, of
the Massachusetts bar, prepared hiraself at the last session of
her legislature, to resist the attempt to remove Judge Loring.
In that meraorable exigency, elevating hiraself above the clairas
of his political connections ; subraitting even his personal sym
pathies and personal antipathies to his love of truth and sense
of duty ; standing alone against his friends, he produced an
argument and an appeal against that foUy and madness, of
which any man might be proud ; skUfuUy reasoned and elo
quently urged in all parts, but particularly instructive in its

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. SS'^
treatraent of the history and the practical interpretation of this
power. With the results of his inquiries I am attended, and I
repeat, that for such a proceeding as here is threatened, the
file affords no precedent. Why, he teUs us that even the
leaders in the attempt against Judge Loring — or the more
prudent and better taught of these leaders — did not venture
to maintain a doctrine so novel and so outrageous, as that the
legislature could remove an honest and competent judge for
the reason that they thought he had erred conscientiously in
the interpretation of a statute. Even in the madness of that
hour ; even in the presence of that flushed and frantic majority,
they shrank frora this extravagance. In his argument on
that occasion, Mr. Dana reraarks, —
" The grounds upon which Mr. Phillips puts the case are, that though
guilty of no impeachable conduct in office, Judge Loring has shown him
self unfit to hold the office ; that he has wilfully disregarded the will of
the people, as expressed by the legislature ; that he has shown such a
want of the judicial qualities, such inhumanity, such corruptness of mind,
and so forfeited the confidence of the community, and so incurred its
permanent and just abhorrence, that the retaining him in office is a
public scandal, and the public interests in the probate-office demand his
removal." That was the case on which they pretended to press his
removal. If ,such a case had been proved, it raight have con
stituted the " bad behavior " of the constitution, and might
have come within the power. Such a case that fanatical ma
jority was brought to feel had been proved, and therefore, not
so much in violation of law, as under the blindest and wildest
raisapprehension of facts, they voted the address. You know
the rest. The governor refused to remove. The sober sec
ond thought of Massachusetts, although she has " conquered
none of her prejudices " against the fugitive slave law, and
those who administer it, sustained hira, and has pronounced
the courage, the sobriety of mind, the correct appreciation of
facts, and sound exposition of the constitution, which he then
and thus displayed, the true honor of his public life.
Sir, this long and uniforra practical interpretation of this
power by the States, is high evidence of the raeaning of their
constitutions. It is high evidence of the raeaning of your
own. The recorded debates in the several conventions which

358 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
framed or adopted these constitutions, throw some light, though
less than could be wished, on the objects and limitations of
this power, and on what is really meant by continuing or ceas
ing to be of good behavior. But the conteraporaneous and
subsequent usage, so uniforra and so eraphatic, more than
supplies the deficiency, and more than completes the a priori
demonstration. Taken in connection with the actual structures
of the constitutions themselves, to which I shall iu a few
moments address rayself, it places the meaning of the people
beyond all doubt. It proves that they never intended nor
iraagined, by this power, to impair the true independence of the
judiciary, as a separate and coequal department of governraent,
suprerae in its sphere over both the others, — no, nor of any
single judge, in the least degree. It proves that they never
intended to establish the tenure of good behavior in terms, and
yet to establish the tenure of mere legislative will, in effect.
It proves that they never intended that the legislature, or the
governor, or both together, should have power to compel the
supreme court to utter their opinions, instead of its own, on a
raatter of judicial cognizance, on peril of deprivation of office
under the scandalous charge of bad behavior. It prepares us
to find when we corae critically to inspect the constitutions
themselves, that they are harmonized and consistent systems ;
every part co-working with every other ; each and all capable
of complete and reasonable execution ; demanding only to be
administered in the spirit and from the point of view in which
they were constructed.
In this connection it may not be undeserving of notice, that
the source from which we perhaps adopted this provision for
the reraoval by address, and the history of its origin there,
afford sorae additional ground of presuraption, a priori, that
we did not design it as a means of impairing judicial indepen
dence, and help to explain perhaps, to sorae extent, the sparing
and special use we have always raade of it. The fraraers of
our constitutions found it existing in that of England. They
knew how it carae there, and why it carae there. They knew,
therefore, that it had its origin in no intention to raake the
judge dependent on the raere pleasure of any body; in no
intention to enable king or parliaraent, or both, to compel a
court, in banc or nisi prius, to accept the executive, or the

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 359
legislative exposition of statutes, in place of its own ; in no
intention to nullify the fundamental maxim of liberty which
prescribes the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial
powers. They knew on the contrary, that the parliaraent ,
which first incorporated this provision into the public law of
England, at that very raoraent, and by a systera of provisions
of which this very one was part, was designing and accora
plishing that last and not the least grand and beneficent result
of the revolution, to which even Williara yielded late and
reluctantly, a true, practical, and safe judicial independence.
It was one of a scherae of measures, not aiming to raake
the judge dependent on parliaraent, but to raake hira indepen
dent of the king. Its precise object was to secure him in
office while his official behavior was good ; to raake known that
the siraple and conscientious refusal to interpret a statute, or do
anything else, against his own convictions, and for the pleasure
of the king, was not bad official behavior, per se; and to guar
anty to hira that until the justice and honor of both houses of
parliament should authorize it, no power in the constitution
raight reraove him from his place. Its object was not to enable
parliament, but to restrain the king. Always the two houses
could petition for anything. This clause acquired no new
rights for thera. It was not intended to do so. It was diverso
intuitu. It was to give to the people of England what before
they had never had, or had by happy accident only, a judge who
knew no master but the law, and no distinctions but of rights.
Before the Revolution of 1688, judges held office at the pleas
ure of the crown. They had been therefore, with glorious
and rare exceptions, the instruments, say rather more plainly,
if you do not think too concisely, the tools of the crown. Such,
under such tenures, the British statesraen of the revolution
foresaw they must ever continue ; and while they should
continue such, they discerned that tbey had achieved the rev
olution in vain. In the year 1700? therefore, in the final act
of settlement, entitled " An act for the further limitation of the
crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the sub
ject," they consumraated their work by substituting the tenure
of good behavior, for the tenure of the pleasure of the king ;
thus giving to the people of England, through all their gener
ations, that indispensable and that vast security of right and

360 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
liberty, an independent judiciary. This exactly, and raerely,
was the object of the seventh clause of the act of settlement.
So the fraraers of our constitution understood that precedent ;
and so they interpreted its lessons. No wonder that a provis
ion having such an historical origin, aiming at and marking so
briUiant and beneficent a trial of judicial independence, should
have been adrainistered uniforraly thus far in the spirit of that
origin. No wonder that, designed to assure the judges of
England that mere disobedience of the king's will shall not
forfeit their commissions, it has been uniformly interpreted
here to assure our judges that raere disobedience of the gov
ernor's will shall not forfeit theirs. No wonder that, intro
duced there to encourage and to corapel the judge to forra and
utter his own opinions of the law, under his responsibility to
conscience and the people, instead of echoing and registering
the opinions of others, it has never yet been understood here
to raake an honest and careful judicial opinion a crirae. Be
fore so vast an innovation is hazarded, let us be quite certain
that there is soraething in the constitution of Maine to distin
guish it frora the general Araerican raodel, and to warrant a
departure from the uniform American practice.
And this conducts me to that instruraent itself. In what
terms is your power given? In the following : —
" Sec. 5. Every person holding any civil office under the State, may
be removed by impeachment, for misdemeanor in office ; and every per
son holding any office, may be removed by the governor with the advice
of the council, on the address of both branches of the legislature. But
before such address shall pass either House, the causes of removal shall
be stated and entered on the journal of the House in which it originated,
and a copy thereof served on the person in office, that he may be admitted
to a hearing in his defence."
This language you say is quite general. Certainly. Taken
by itself, and without attention to the whole well-considered
and consistent writing of which it is part, it is so. He raay
reraove on address. But for what cause did the people of
Maine intend that you should address? Sorae causes there
must be; sorae causes that raay be stated and entered of record,
and against which he must be heard in his defence. For
what causes then? It does not enumerate thera in terms,
nor define in terms either the general object, or the particular

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 361
I
limitations. But will any man therefore venture to say that
they authorize a reraoval without cause ? Certainly not. If,
theu, there must be cause, capable of statement on the record,
and to which the incurabent raust be allowed to defend, it must
be good cause. And how shaU we know what the people
meant should be deeraed a good cause ? Shall we say they
meant that anything which the legislature of the hour raight
bring theraselves to vote a good cause, is, and becoraes a
good cause ? Why, this would be to give you in this behalf
arbitrary power. It would be to give to one branch of gov
ernraent arbitrary power over another branch of government.
It would be to authorize two branches to extinguish a third,
or turn it into an echo and a shadow of theraselves, at their
mere pleasure. It would be to place the honor of the judge —
his sensibilities, his reasonable expectations, his right to his
office guaranteed during good behavior in his turn — at the
disposal of whim, passion, pride, partisanship — the humor of
the " elective despotism " of the moraent. Sir, such power
cannot be given, and cannot be taken, by raere iraplication.
It raust be given in clear and peremptory terras, or it is not
given at all. Do you find it so given ? No. Do you find it
said, " and the legislature may so address, and the governor
may so remove, at their mere pleasure " ? No. Then the
power is not arbitrary. It is not unlimited. It is limited to
the existence of good cause proved on trial. Well, to deter
mine whether any particular cause alleged is what the people
meant should be deeraed good cause; to deterraine whether
in any particular case they meant you should exercise this
power, you are to take the whole constitution together, and to
see, upon a careful collation of all its parts, whether so to
exercise it, and for such cause, is or is not incompatible with
other provisions, whose meaning you cannot misunderstand ;
whose objects and whose spirit you cannot and would not deny
that you perfectly knew. If it is so incompatible, it is not
authorized. If it is so incompatible, it is forbidden. And I
assert of the proposed removal of this judge for this cause —
an honest and able man — for an interpretation of the consti
tution and the statute, which you think mistaken, it is a use of
this power absolutely incompatible with the rest of the con
stitution, with its whole structure and pervading spirit and
VOL. n. 31

362 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
general idea, and with numerous particular provisions whose
sense and end no raan can help seeing. For that reason, I
say it is unauthorized and is forbidden. So to exercise the
power were to abuse and pervert it. If there is no other
departraent of governraent to revise and reverse such a pro
ceeding, as I believe there is, there would still be some
responsibility to character, to conscience, and to the great pop
ular law-giver behind, which no servant of the public can
disregard if he would, or would if he could.
It need not be argued to such an asserably as this, that the
true rule of interpreting the constitution requires that every
provision of it, however general in terras, be so construed as
to be made consistent with every other. Each is to be
deemed a part of a careful and skilful whole. Every power is
to be deemed given, and is to be used in trust for all the con
stitution. And therefore, if of two constructions of a power
like this — of reraoving a judge — one construction reconciles
it with all the residue of the instruraent, and especially its raore
fundaraental provisions and principles, while the other construc
tion brings it directly in conflict with thera, and would annul
or essentially defeat their ends and erabarrass their adrainistra
tion — of these two constructions, that which harraonizes and
executes all, is the true construction. Surely, this is too clear
for arguraent. You construe every writing, however hasty,
and however unskUful, by this rule. You presurae an inten
tion to make harraonious and consistent work ; and you give
effect, if you can, to every stipulation and to every word ;
although to do so you depart here and there frora the ordinary
use, and here and there lirait and restrict the apparent gener
ality. So you would deal with the most inartificial instru
ment, touching the most trivial concern. But with how much
more reason should you so interpret a written constitution of
free government ? Is there any production of huraan art, of
huraan wiU, so prodigious and so grand ? Is there any to
which raore reason, thought, virtue, deeper studies, more fer
vent prayer to God, have been invoked ? Is there any writing
of man's hands, in which we may be more certain to find har
mony of parts ; cooperation of all with each and each with aU;
the easy and .sure play of the auxiliary raachinery of order and
adjustraent ; not a conflict of antagonisms ? Think how many

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 363
of our greatest rainds have cooperated in this kind of work ;
how rauch discussion among the people has preceded and
attended and assisted it ; in how true a sense it has been the
master-work of American reason and virtue, — and say if you
do not expect to find such a document true to itself? Do you
expect to find, that in such a constitution as yours — in which
are erabodied, not only the thoughts of the Kings, and
Holraeses, and Thatchers, and Eraerys, and Whitraans, but
the thoughts of all who have set their hands to our Araerican
public law, from the Declaration of Independence^ — that in such
a constitution the latter end of the commonwealth will be found
to have forgot the beginning ? Surely here, if anywhere, you
will look for consistency and harraony.
And therefore, if of two interpretations, each satisfying the
mere words of a clause like this, one is found to execute the
whole, and the other to defeat half; one found to carry out
certain grand ideas, as separation of departments, and indepen
dence of each of the other two ; and the other to erase or stifle
them — if one makes the constitution a systera of cooperation,
and the other a chaos of conflict, you will not hesitate which
to adopt.
And now I submit that there are parts of this constitution,
with which such an interpretation of this power, as would
authorize the removal of an honest and competent judge for
what you are pleased to call a mistake of written law — an
honest mistake — is totally incompatible^ There are parts of
it whose clear sense and acknowledged ends are totally de
feated by such an interpretation. If so, it is deraonstrated to
be false. What are they ?
In the first place, there is that provision which, according
to the universal doctrine of American liberty under written
constitutions, ordains that there shall be a distribution of all
the powers of government among three departments — legis
lative, judicial, and executive; that each shall possess its own;
each, as the general principle, within its sphere, be supreme,
coordinate with, and independent of, both the rest; and ordains,
more precisely, that of the powers thus assigned to the
judiciary, shall be that of interpreting and administering the
constitution and statutes; and that in that function of inter
pretation, the judiciary is not only independent of the legisla-

364 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
tive and executive, but is the supreme power in the last resort,
whose determinations are conclusive on all other branches and
all other men.
That there is such a provision in your constitution is certain.
It forms the matter of article third : —
" Sec. 1. The powers of this government shall be divided into three
distinct departments — the legislative, executive, and judicial.
"Sec. 2. No person or persons, belonging to one of these depart
ments, shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of
the others, except in the cases herein expressly directed or permitted."
So then, there are three " distinct departments ; " each with
its own powers ; each, and every member of each, forbidden
to exercise those of another ; each with its own work to do ;
each to do it all ; and neither to usurp ; neither to share.
Such is the principle. From what great constitutional
exaraples you borrowed it; by what great masters it comes
recommended ; how universally it has been adopted into our
constitutions ; how indispensable it is to liberty and the gov
ernraent of law — you all know. You all know that the
Araerican doctrine in this behalf is, that without it there is no
liberty. For want of it, the beautiful but headlong and pas
sionate republics of Greece and Italy burned out and fell,
successively, frora their thrones on high. In the sublirae and
fine language of Harrington, adopted into the constitution of
Massachusetts, we established this separation of departraents
" to the end it raay be a government of laws and not of men."
And now, to accomplish such separation, what does the theory,
what does the practice of Araerican constitutional liberty de
mand ? Not, certainly, that each department should be totally
disconnected from each; for that were impossible. and useless,
and even calculated to defeat the practical enforcement of the
principle itself. But these things are of its essence — that
" neither departraent ought to possess, directly or indirectly,
an overruling influence in the adrainistration of the powers of
another ; " " that all be so constituted, as far as is practicable,
as to keep each in its proper place ; " " that each departraent
have a will of its own ; " " that each be independent of the
others, as far as raay be, for its continuance in office as well
as the eraoluraents of office ; " and that " each be armed with
the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to
resist the encroachments of the others."

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 365
I have set these forth in the very terms of that raasterly
exaraination of this principle of liberty contained in " The Fed-
erralist," Nos. 47 to 51 inclusive ; and as you find thera, for
substance, erabodied in your own constitution.
And now, under this distribution of powers, what is assigned
to the judiciary? What are the powers which it is appointed
to perforra ; which it alone can perform ; on which, therefore,
it is raade the suprerae arbiter in the last resort ? Sir, not to
enuraerate thera all, let rae say, that by concession of every
body, araong them are these : — to interpret the constitution ;
to interpret statutes ; to try all legislative action assuming the
form of law, and all executive action affecting individual right,
by the standard of the constitution, and if it find it unauthor
ized by that fundamental rule, to declare it void. So rauch is
conceded by everybody. The people establish the constitution,
and they declare therein, that the judiciary shall in the last re
sort deterraine its raeaning, and that that deterraination shall
bind all other branches of governraent. They provide for the
enactraent of statutes by the legislature, but they declare that
the judiciary shall deterraine their raeaning, and that that also
shall bind all other branches. Creating the constitution as the
suprerae law, and intending, therefore, that no act of raagis
trates high or hurable, and no statute, passed by any majority,
repugnant td that supreme law, shall have force or effect, they
devolve on the judiciary the duty of ascertaining if such repug
nance exists ; and if so, to uphold their will against their ser
vants, by annulling what they have atterapted. This you all
concede. The constitution of Maine does not, no constitution
in terms does, define the extent and particulars, or declare the
nature of judicial power, or the effect of judicial action. To
learn these, it sends us to political science, to Araerican politi
cal science, to the systems and language of writers, to the
practice of govemments under written constitutions, to the
judgments of courts, to the acquiescence of the people. And
these demonstrate that such, in our systera, are the character
and functions of the judiciary. Since the 78th paper of "The
Federalist " was written, indeed, such has been the universal
opinion. So your own courts have holden. So does the ma
jority of your own committee, appointed to inquire how far
your constitution has been amended, and when the araendraents
31*

366 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
took effect. In terras they say that this, in the last resort,
must be decided by the judiciary, and to that extent they agree
with everybody else.
Now, Sir, my proposition is, that to these provisions of your
constitution, that interpretation of this power, which would re
move this judge for the cause alleged on this record, is abso
lutely repugnant, and must therefore be rejected. If it be
admitted, as it must be, that the people have distributed among
the three classes of their servants the three descriptions of
power, assigning to each its own, and making each mthin its
sphere supreme ; and if it be adraitted, as it must be, that in
this distribution they have assigned the power of interpreting
the constitution and the law, and of deciding whether acts of
magistrates and statutes of the legislature are or are not void,
to the judiciary; and if it be finally admitted, as it must be,
that this power of removal is to be so construed as to reconcile
it with the residue of the instruraent, and raake of it a harmo
nious whole, — then surely it cannot be supposed to have in-
tended to authorize the legislature and the governor to punish
the court or the judge for doing just what they were created to
do, and what the governor and the legislature were not created
to do ; that is to say, honestly to interpret and administer the
constitution and law in questions of conflicts of right. Would
not such a construction cover the whole instrument with con
tempt? Can you iraagine its fraraers, can you imagine the
people of Maine, to set forth in this master-work, that whereas
the examples and the teachings of the past, the warnings of
history, the necessities of free constitutions, inculcate a division
of the powers of government, we therefore adopt it, we commit
the office of interpretation to the judge, and we declare that as
against his interpretation the opinions of the executive and the
legislature shall be absolutely inoperative and void ; can you
imagine thera, after saying this, within two pages onward fall
ing into such ridiculous and incredible inconsistency as to say,
" but the executive and legislature raay punish him by depri
vation of office for exercising honestly, and according to his
judgraent, this very power of interpretation which we commit
exclusively to hira, and deny to them ? He shaU interpret, and
they shall not. His interpretation shall bind them, and theirs
shall not bind him ; but, if they disapprove his interpretation,

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 367
they raay turn him out ; if they fear the interpretation he is
about to make, they may terrify hira, by the threat of reraoval,
into the adoption of theirs. They shaU not exercise judicial
power, and he shall ; their opinions shall not give the law, and
his shall ; but they raay constitutionally put in and put out,
until he shaU echo and record exactly what they would have
hira to do ! " Such inconsistency is inconceivable. It would
be so if the distribution of power araong three departraents
were a mere matter of convenience or form. But when you
recall the grand reasons on which that doctrine and practice
depend ; when you consider that the fraraers of this instruraent
were deeply learned in these reasons ; that history, exaraples
old and new, the concurrent expression of all great political
thinkers, the universal Araerican judgraent and habit, all were
farailiar, and all taught that without this separation there was
an end of liberty ; that without it they were establishing a gov
ernraent, not of laws, but of men ; that without an independent
judicial department — independent of the law-making power,
neither private right nor the constitution itself was secure, -—
you feel how impossible it is that they should laboriously and
carefully provide for it on one page, and on another forget it,
and give it to the winds ! They solemnly record their attesta
tion to the truth, importance, and grandeur of this maxim of
political liberty. They formally construct their constitution
according to it. They expressly forbid each to exercise the
powers of another, except in the precise cases provided in the
constitution itself. The interpretation of statutes and the con
stitution is not one of these cases. Such interpretation, as
against the judiciary, the executive and the legislature are
therefore expressly forbidden to make, — because that is an
accumulation of powers in the same hands, and is the very
definition of tyranny ; and yet they are intentionally authorized
to accoraplish the very sarae thing without disguise, by punish
ing the judge for doing the very work, in his own way, as
signed hira and forbidden them !
Run it out. Sir, in its application to this case. The governor
of Maine can appoint a sheriff, if the constitution in force at the
time he assumes to appoint one authorizes him to do so. If
it does not, he cannot. All agree to this. Whether the con
stitution then in force does so authorize him is a question which

368 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
the instruraent itself coraraits exclusively to the judiciary. It
ordains that his opinion shall not decide it; that the' legislative
opinion shall not decide it; but that the judicial opinion shall
decide it, whether he like the opinion, or the legislature like it,
or not. So far all agree, " We ordain this," say the people,
" to the end that ours raay be a governraent of laws, and not
of raen ; and that no governor shall usurp a power of appoint
ment which our constitution does not give him ; because under
that, and of that, an independent judiciary is a calmer, more
learned, safer, and more competent arbiter than he, or the leg
islature of his party," So far, you agree, the people speak ;
so far wisely, so far worthily ; but then coraes " provided, and
nevertheless, and notwithstanding, that if the governor and
legislature think the judiciary decide erroneously against his
authority, they raay reraove the old judges and he raay appoint
new ones, until the bench shall agree in an opinion with his
excellency, and the two houses approve; and then he may ap
point his sheriff! " That is the proviso which they who would
reraove this judge have to find in the constitution. Sir, it is
not there, the text is a forgery, and the doctrine it is interpo
lated to support is an error of the deadliest type.
Mr. President, this article providing for separation of de
partraents, is not the only one in the constitution to which this
construction of the power of reraoval is utterly repugnant. To
other particular provisions, to its whole structure, and its whole
spirit, it is so equally.
This constitution raeans to raake the judge independent of
other branches ; your interpretation totally defeats it. When
the convention which forraed it, had nearly corapleted their
work, and were about to vote on its final acceptance, Mr,
flolraes, who had borne so conspicuous a part in its delibera
tions, could rise, and in a brief and glowing speech, congratu
late thera " that among other great results, they had established
an independent judiciary, responsible to the people," But
how could he have raade that boast, if on a mere difference of
opinion upon the law, the other branches raight displace the
court ? Where and what was that pretence, and that dreara
of independence, if a party leader, plaintiff or defendant, dis
satisfied with a ruling at nisi prius on a charter party or a deed
with warranty, without waiting for an opportunity of appealing

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 369
to the whole bench, could run to the legislature and turn out
the judge on an allegation of raistake of law ?
See how this conception of independence pervades the con
stitution, and what a fancy, and what a mockery it is, if this
interpretation of the power of removal is indulged. Its decla
ration of rights begins by proclaiming that all men " have cer
tain natural inherent and inalienable rights, among which are
those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, pos
sessing, and protecting property, and of pursuing and obtaining
safety and happiness."
But what are all these sounding abstractions worth, if the
studies, and the firmness, and the virtues of the judge are not
engaged to ascertain those rights and administer thera ; and
how and where are you to find the possessor, if his very first
decision is to forfeit his office ? It declares all men " equally
under the protection of the laws." And what does this avail,
if the commission of the governor of a day and a party, goes
for conclusive evidence of the law ? It guarantees " impartial
trial." And who can give such a trial, but an independent
judge ? It guarantees to " all raen their legal rights ; a due
course of law; justice administered freely and without sale,
completely and without denial, promptly and without delay."
But at whose hands shall they have them, if the supreme dic
tator is but a pensioner on the bounty of an hour ? It engages
to the judge for his seven years of official life, a tenure as cer
tain as his good behavior ! But how empty a name is good
behavior, if to differ on the law from the governor or legisla
ture, is bad behavior ! It entitles him to a stateraent of the
causes of removal, before he can be removed, and a chance to
defend against them. But how can he defend against your
mere good pleasure ? flow can he stand against the unan
swerable and stern recital, '^'^ Licet hoc de jure non possumus
volumus tamen de plenitudine potestatiS."
It is fraraed in all its parts to meet and supply that twofold
demand of the Anglo-Saxon nature, liberty and security ; lib
erty with security, liberty for the sake of security. To provide
for the perpetuity of freedom was an easy undertaking. But
to unite with that the inviolate sacredness of rights ; to bless
and temper it with peace, order, trust, contentment ; to give to
every man his own ; to guard the earnings of labor from in-

370 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
justice, fraud, and force, while he lives, and transmit thera to
those nearest to his blood and heart when he dies ; to raake free
dom yield with certainty and in abundance those fruits, was a
harder, nor less noble achieveraent. For this it has ordained
the adrainistration of law, whose power constrains the greatest,
and whose care corapasses the least about. But how can it
have this, without the studies, virtues, courage, and impartiality
of a bench that owns no master but the law, and no duty but
justice ?
It has been suggested, I hear, that the limitations on this
power for which we contend, may be adraitted to be sound, in
so far as they apply to the whole bench of judges of the Su
prerae Court, and to the whole judicial departraent ; but that
they have no application to a single judge holding a legal term
alone. You cannot reraove the judges, it is said, for the law
they lay down when all together ; but for the law any one lays
down at nisi prius, you raay. fle may be able and he may be
conscientious ; it raay be just as clearly his official duty to form
and express an opinion in one case as the other ; he may give
the sarae reasons and corae to the same results ; but for what
he does in company he is safe ; for what he does alone, you
may forfeit his comraission.
Mr. President, a distinction like this it seeras scarcely possible
seriously to raaintain, or seriously to deny. It all proceeds of
course, upon this enorraous supposition ; that a judge sitting
alone, is officially bound to receive and administer as law that
which his learning and reason inform him is not law ; and
which, sitting with the whole court the next week, he will be
bound by his conscience to declare not to be law. This, with
out phrases, is the whole of it. At nisi prius he must obey
the governor ; as one of the whole court, he may obey the con
stitution. In one place he is the servant of the executive. In
the other he is servant only of the people. In one place he is
nothing but a citizen. In the other he is altogether a judge.
In one place he is bound to pronounce the commission of a
sheriff valid, although clear and certain in his convictions that
the people, by an amendment of their constitution, have with
drawn from the governor the authority to make it. In the
other, on the very same day, he is bound, under the same con
viction, by his oath, by his responsibility to God, the people

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 371
and the constitution, to pronounce it invalid. That conduct
which in one place would be virtue, conscientiousness, judicial
independence, the upholding of the powers and the perforra
ance of the duties of a coordinate department, made suprerae
within its sphere, " to the end that it raay be a government of
laws and not of raen," that sarae conduct, on exactly the same
evidence, and exactly the same opinions, is in the other place,
insubordination, ignorance, and bad temper, so gross as to for
feit his office !
Where is the evidence of any such distinction as this ? Does
the constitution make it ? Nowhere. Does his comraission ?
No, certainly. That coraraission, reciting the confidence of the
appointing power in his learning, fidelity, and abUity, appoints
hira a judge of the Suprerae Court of Maine — nor less nor
more. By that act it clothes hira with the entire judicial char
acter, and charges hira with the whole judicial duty ; and
whatsoever, anywhere by the constitution and statutes and
comraon law of Maine, one judge raay do, he is authorized
"to do. Is it by statute, then, that the single judge at nisi prius
is forbidden to adrainister the law, according to his lights :
saving to parties aggrieved their right, by exceptions, or other
wise, according to the subject-matter, to subject his determina
tions to review by the whole court ? Sir, you know, and I
cannot be presumed to know, the statutes of Maine, and its
practice in this behalf; but I am instructed, and I subrait to
your learning, that in your system, as in that of Massa
chusetts, the single judge is bound to find, declare, and enforce
the law at nisi prius, by the sarae obligation, to the sarae ex
tent exactly, with the firraness and the sarae impartiality, as
when he sits in banc, — subject, only, of course, to the ulti
mate reversal of his decisions at the law term of the court.
Certain classes of causes, by statute, he may not try alone, —
capital causes, for example, and others perhaps, — because the
statute restrains it ; but others again, — all others arising be
fore him, he is required to try, and required to decide in the
first instance ; and for the rule of trial, and the rule of decis
ion, — ^in all cases, without any exception on which the judgment
- of the Supreme Court, as a whole court, has not already been
authoritatively uttered, — for the rule of trial, and the rule of
decision, he is bound to have resort to the law, as his studies
and his reason teach him the law.

372

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

Yes, Sir. For the deterraination of all matters before him,
in the first instance, he is the judiciary of Maine. For all
such matters, and in the first instance, he represents, he is,
that whole department, clothed with aU its constitutional im
munities, affected by all its constitutional responsibilities, to the
people, to the law, to conscience, to honor.
True, the decision of the court at nisi prius raay be revised
and reversed by the whole court. But he is authorized to
make thera. fle is required to raake thera as a judge. He
is required to raake thera. He is required to raake them,
then, according to law. It is as a court of law he raakes them.
That which is law for hira anywhere, is law for hira there.
That which is evidence of the law for hira anywhere, is evi
dence of the law for hira there. Some questions indeed, he
must, frora their nature, decide at once. Frora their nature
they raust, for the present, be irreversibly decided. Such, ex
actly, was the one, whether A. or B. was the sheriff of his
court for his term. Was he to allow them to fight it out in
his presence ? Was he to allow that fight to proceed till the law
terra of the court ? Then he must decide it on the spot, and
he must decide it by law, or he is no judge. Think, Sir, how
absurd, and how sad would be the consequences, if the judge
at nisi prius is to be held above or below the law of the land
for his rule of decision ! When you consider that he tries, in
the first instance, all cases, civil and criminal, under the degree
of capital ; that in a vast proportion, from the necessities of
parties, or the circurastances of the case, his decisions are prac
tically final ; that in his quickness, firmness, meraory, learning,
sagacity, the whole value of the trial by jury so largely depends,
you wiU pause before you sanction this whim that he is legibtis
solutus ; that he is at liberty to substitute a fancy of expedi
ency ; to substitute fear, favor, affection ; the hope of reward,
or the respect of persons, for that established law, in whose
learning he is instructed, and in whose presence magistrates
and people stand on an absolute equality.
But there is another view in which the attempted distinction
appears quite as inadraissible. It leads directly to the confu
sion of the departments of government ; to the annihUation of
judicial independence, and the accumulation of power in the
hands of the executive and legislature. You cannot remove

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. g'^^S
the judge for an honest, judicial decision at a law term. That,
you agree, is not within the scope and objects of this power.
Every other part of the constitution, you have seen, forbids it.
But if a judge can be reraoved for his decision at nisi prius
just as honestly raade, does it not come to exactly the sarae
thing ? If you can reraove one, can you not another, and an
other ? The whole bench is safe, but every member raay be
picked off in detaU ! If a judge concurs with his brethren in
banc, iu a question on a charter-party, or a bill of exchange,
or policy of insurance against fire, he is beyond your reach;
but if he had ruled the sarae point the sarae way in a jury trial
the week before, he might have been removed for it ! Who
does not see that on such a distinction the boast of judicial in
dependence is idle and deceptive ?
You will not understand me as denying or undervaluing the
expediency and the duty of the single judge, and of aU judges,
paying true and constant respect to the action and opinions of
the other departraents of governraent. My client does not deny
or undervalue it. He has never faUed, in any just sense, in
that duty and that policy. Our systera is a systera, not of an-
tagonisras, but of cooperation. Each departraent, in the first
instance, raust forra its own opinions and order its own conduct
for itself. The governor of Maine, in the first instance, had
the clear, constitutional right to adopt and act on the convic
tion that the recent araendraents had not bereaved him of his
power to appoint a sheriff. He adopted that conviction, and
under it raade this appointraent. When this fact becarae
judicially known to Judge Davis, or to the whole court, they
were bound to receive it as an opinion of a coordinate branch
of government, and as such to treat it with entire respect. So
he did receive it. So he did treat it. But when, on that ap
pointraent, a question arose before hira, in his own cour^t, in
the direct course of judicial duty, — a question of legal right
to office, — a question whether in that court-house, for that terra,
the old or the new one was the sheriff, and this depended on a
proposition of law ; when the incumbent cited the existing
constitution, and the statute for amending, and the amendment
itself, and claimed that the governor had raistaken the law, —
then. Sir, the sraaller raorals of deference and assentation were
displaced in a moment by the requirements of duty. That
VOL. II. 32

374 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
moraent the judge was bound to reraeraber that he was a judge.
That raoraent he was bound to reraember that he was one of
that department by whom the legal, opinions of governors and
legislatures are intended by the constitution to be conclusively
revised and corrected; and that subserviency and cowardice
then would be crime against the State and against conscience,
and injustice to the party before hira, who had established his
title to his perfect conviction.
And does not this put the doctrine of the reciprocal respect
of departraents on its true ground? Does it not secure deco
rura, courtesy, honor, to and frora whora they are due ? Would
you carry it farther, and train your public servants to raean-
ness and to servility, — train thera to stifle their sense of duty
and character, ahd to seek thrift by fawning ?
The arguraent thus far has aimed to prove, from the histor
ical origin of this power, from its practical uniform adniinis-
tration, and from the general structure and particular provisions
of the constitution itself, and especially frora the relations and
functions of the several departraents, and the nature and con
ditions of a true judicial independence, that you are not author
ized to reraove a judge for this cause ; that the power of
reraoval is given for objects and under limitations which for
bid such an exercise of it.
There is a narrower view of the subject, perhaps even more
decisive, to which I advert rather for the purpose of expressing
my full concurrence with the elaborate arguraent of ray asso
ciates, than of taxing ray own strength to restate and enforce it.
And that is, that if the act here coraplained of has any charac
ter of delinquency at all, for which you can punish, — as I have
atterapted to show it has not, — it is a misdemeanor in office;
and that there you are restricted to the raode of irapeachraent.
If there is bad behavior at all, it is bad behavior in office. It
was an act done on the bench ; it was an act giving direction
to the immediate course of proceedings in court ; and it was an
execution, for the time, of an opinion on a point of law. It
was behavior in office ; and if bad behavior, it was misde
meanor in office ; that or nothing. It is not charged as evi
dencing incorapetency or dishonesty. It is one act, and that
act is a misdemeanor, if it is anything. It foUows by the ex
press terms of the constitution, that if you believe it bad behav-

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 3^5
ior at all, and of course believe it, as you must, a misdemeanor
in office, you may proceed by the mode of impeachraent. But
is not that the only mode ? If the official raisdemeanor prove
or include the additional ingredient of unfitness, of dishonesty,
of incorapetency, it might with some plausibility, but not with
soundness, be argued that you might remove by address, for
this included an additional element, dropping the raisderaeanor,
as such, out of view. But where, as here, this is not so ; where
the raisderaeanor, such as it is, does not prove or include any '
disqualifying or objectionable trait or defect, and consists in one
single alleged mistake of an honest and able man, — there is
only the act itself to proceed for, and that is a naked and mere
misdemeanor, or nothing. Must you not deal with it then by
impeachment ? Is not the rule of law quite general, and does
it not directly apply, that when a statute creates or declares an
offence, and provides a mode of trying and punishing it, all other
raodes are, prima facie, excluded ? Is it not another rule of
law, that if a statute bestow a power or franchise, and prescribe
a mode of exerting it, it can, prima facie, be exerted in no
other ? And does not your power to remove for official raisde
raeanor by irapeachraent corae Avithin this rule ? Other modes,
in both classes of cases,, may, in words or necessary construc
tion, be permitted, no doubt. But here are no words to say,
that for official misdemeanor merely an officer raay be removed
by address. Nor is that a necessary construction ; for all the
other language of the article raay be satisfied by applying it to
causes other than official raisdemeanor. And when you con
sider the improbability that double and totally diverse, nay,
incorapatible proceedings, should be provided for the very sarae
act ; that a raisderaeanor being a species of crirainal offenpe, —
though certainly not necessarily an indictable offence, — it seeras
fit, and according to all analogy, that a real, well-guarded, and
cautious trial should be allowed for it ; the presentment by one
branch ; the hearing pn oath by the other ; all the forras and
all the substance of trial, for crirae, — it seems difficult to resist
the conclusion, that this great statute is to be construed like
every other, and the mode prescribed be held the only mode
intended. Reflect that protection to judges is protection to
suitors. The judge must feel safe, that parties may have jus
tice. You secure yourselves fair trial when you secure him
fair trial.

376 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
But this topic I have not strength to pursue ; — and I leave
it with great pleasure upon the powerful reasonings you have
heard already. It is due to frankness in taking leave of it to
say, that I do not suppose that there is one raember of this
Convention, or one man out of it, who believes that there has
been committed a raisderaeanor in office. No man believes,
anywhere, that an irapeachraent could coramand one vote in
either branch. But why ? Because the act is not indictable ?
No, indeed ; for that is universally admitted not to be necessary
to support an impeachraent. Why then? Exactly because
Judge Davis's intent was honest ; and his error, if he erred,
innocent. And if so, and if it does not prove incorapetency,
ignorance, or any other quality or deficiency disqualifying or
unbecoming a judge, — as the record of charges adraits, and
all the proofs demonstrate, — pray. Sir, for what do you re
move him ? The act is mere raisderaeanor, if it is anything ;
and as misdemeanor, they dare not irapeach it.
Thus far, Sir, the argument has assumed that Judge Davis
mistook the law. But there is another side of the question.
That he made no mistake at all ; or that no man can be so far
certain that he made it, as to find in his entire conduct in this
matter a colorable pretext for imputation on his learning, abil
ity, uprightness, and discretion, wUl now be very briefly sub
mitted. It involves in part a point of local law, and in part a
more flexible inquiry of official ethics and proprieties ; and in
neither aspect does it ask or warrant very elaborate considera
tion. And in the first place, is it not rather premature to pro
ceed to such extrerae action as this, on such cause as this ? You
are raoved to displace him for mistaking a point of law. But
under the constitution, who is the ultimate judge of this ? Cer
tainly the Supreme Court. So much the report of your own
coraraittee concedes. So much all men concede. This Con
vention, abounding doubtless iu abiUty, learning, and weight of
character, is not the judge. UntU that tribunal shall determine
his opinion erroneous, can it be constitutionaUy known, and
safely or prudently pronounced to be erroneous? To punish for
it, before it can be known such, is that discreet ? What if the
suprerae power of the constitution should declare his decision to
be good law ? What then were his position, and what yours ?
Certainly the executive and legislative branches of governraent

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. S'T^
may in the first instance, and for the guidance of their proper
departmental duties, provisionally decide a question of interpre
tation. But before they try and punish a member of another
branch for misinterpretation, is it not wise to have the highest
evidence that this offence has really been committed ?
But to your judgment, is the misinterpretation established ?
The people of Maine, it is now conceded by all, have so araend
ed their constitution as to withdraw frora the executive the
power to appoint sheriffs, and resuraed it to themselves. The
general question which carae before Judge Davis was, — had
they so withdrawn the power and so resuraed it at the tirae
when the new sheriff' received his coraraission ? And this ques
tion divided^ itself into two : first, had their araendraents become
part of the constitution before he had his coraraission ; and if
so, secondly, did they at once withdraw the executive power to
create a vacancy and to appoint to it ; or did they leave it as it
stood before, until sorae future day and event ?
The deterraination of both these questions depended upon the
true intent of the fourth section of the tenth article of the ex
isting constitution, and the true intent of certain resolves of the
legislature of Maine, adopted on the 17th of March, 1855.
By a just construction of that article and those resolves, did the
amendments become part of the constitution in November, 1 855,
upon its being made to appear to the governor and council that
a majority of votes given were in favor of them ; or did they
not become so until the next legislature should so declare ?
The article of the constitution is this : —
" The legislature, whenever two thirds of both houses shall
deem it necessary, may propose amendments to this constitu
tion ; and when any amendraent shall be so agreed upon, a
resolution shall be passed and sent to the selectmen of the
several towns, and the assessors of the several plantations, era-
powering and directing them to notify the inhabitants of their
respective towns and plantations, in the raanner prescribed by
law, at their next annual raeeting in the raonth of September,
to give in their votes on the question, whether such amendraent
shall be raade ; and if it shall appear that a raajority of the in
habitants voting on the question are in favor of such araendraent,
it shall becorae a part of this constitution."
The resolves are these : —
32*

3/8

MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.

RESOLVES PROVIDING FOE AN AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION
RELATING TO THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE.
Resolved, Two thrids of both branches of the legislature concurring,
that the constitution of this State shall be amended in the eighth section
of the first part of the fifth article, by inserting after the words "judicial
officers," in the second line of said section, the words " except Judges of
Probate and Municipal and Police Courts," and by striking out the words
" Attorney-General, the Sheriffs, Registers of Probate," in second and
third lines thereof, and by inserting after the words " provided for," in the
seventh line of said section, the words " except the Land Agent."
The sixth article shall be amended by inserting the following sections
at the end of said article : —
" Section 7. Judges and Registers of Probate shall be electedby the
people of their respective counties, by a plurality of the votes given in, at
the annual election on the second Monday of September, and shall hold
their offices for four years, commencing on the first day of January next
after their election. Vacancies occurring in said offices by death, resigna
tion, or otherwise, shall be filled by election in manner aforesaid, at the
September election next after their occurrence ; — and iu the mean time,
the Govemor, with the advice and consent of the Council, may fill said va
cancies by appointment ; and the persons so appointed shall hold their
offices until the first day of January thereafter.
" Sec. 8. Judges of Municipal and Police Courts shall be elected by
the people of their respective cities and towns, by a plurality ofthe votes
given in, at the annual meeting in March or April, and shall hold their offi
ces for four years from the Monday following the day of their election.
Vacancies in said offices shall be filled by elections at the next annual
meeting in March or April ; and in the mean time, the Governor, with the
advice and consent of the Council, may fill said vacancies by appointment
until the Monday following said annual meeting."
The third section of the seventh article shall be amended by striking
out the words " appointed by the Governor and Council," and inserting
instead thereof the words " chosen annually by joint ballot of the Senators
and Representatives in convention."
The ninth article shall be amended by inserting at the end thereof the
following sections : —
" Sec. 9. Sheriffs shall be elected by the people of their respective
counties, by a plurality of the votes given in, on the second Monday of
September, and shall hold their offices for two years from the first day of
January next after their 'election. Vacancies shall be filled in the same
manner as is provided in the cases of Judges and Registers of Probate.
" Sec. 10. The Land Agent and Attorney-General shall be chosen
annually, by joint ballot of the Senators and Representatives in conven
tion. Vacancies in said offices occurring when the Legislature is not in
session may be filled by appointment by the Governor, with the advice
and consent of the Council."
And in all cases of elections provided for in this resolve, the first elec
tions shall take place on the days and times herein prescribed, occurring

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 3^9
next after the amendment providing for such elections shall have been
declared by the Legislature to have been adopted as a part of the Consti
tution. Resolved, That the Aldermen of cities, and Selectmen of the several
towns, and Assessors of the several plantations in the State, are hereby
empowered and directed to notify the inhabitants of their respective cities,
towns, and plantations, iu the manner prescribed by law at the annual
meeting in September next, to give in their votes upon the amendments
proposed in the foregoing resolve ; and the question shall be. Shall the
Constitution be amended as proposed by a resolve of the Legislature pro
viding that the Judges of Probate, Registers of Probate, Sheriffs, and
Municipal and Police Judges shall be chosen by the people ; and also
providing that the Land Agent, Attorney-General, and Adjutant-General
shall be chosen by the Legislature, as the Secretary of State, State Treas
urer and Councillors now are ; and the inhabitants of said cities, towns,
and plantations shall vote by ballot on said questions of electing said offl
cers, separately, those in favor of said amendments, respectively express
ing it by the word " Yes," upon their ballots ; and those opposed to the
amendments respectively expressing it by the word " No," upon their bal
lots ; and the ballots shall be received, sorted, counted, and declared in
open ward, town, and plantation meetings ; and lists shall be made out of
the votes by the Aldermen, Selectmen, and Assessors and Clerks of the
several cities, towns, and plantations, and returned to the office of Secre
tary of State, in the same manner as votes for senators ; and the Governor
and Council shall count the same and make returns thereof to the next
Legislature ; and if a majority of the votes are in favor of any of said
amendments, the constitution shall be amended accordingly.
Resolved, That the Secretary of State shall prepare and furnish the
several cities, towns, and plantations, blank returns, in conformity to the
foregoing resolves, accompanied with a copy thereof.
[Approved March 17, 1855.]
In coraing to consider the question, it was quite fit that Judge
Davis should begin by adopting sorae rule, according to which
he raight decide between two interpretations, either of which
should satisfy the language which he had to interpret, and
neither of which was clearly and unequivocally deraanded by
the language. Accordingly he would seera to have adopted
this : that of two such interpretations, both satisfying the lan
guage, that one is to be preferred which gives the earliest pos
sible effect to the popular will, after that will has been certainly
and regularly proved. And therefore, finding that by the count
of the governor and council in Noveraber, 1856, it had been
clearly and regularly raade to appear to a body authorized to
ascertain it, that the popular wiU had declared itself in favor of
the araendraents, he reasoned, that since the language to be
construed was as fairly susceptible of a construction which
should hold thera out of it for some longer time and some more

380 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
distant event, he ruled in their favor for the earliest time, and
executed their declared will, " completely and without denial,
promptly and without delay."
And is that not a sound rule of interpretation for a case of
equivocal language, on such a subject ? If each satisfies the
words, and each provides perfectly for a sure ascertainment of
the fact of a raajority vote, — is not that a true one which
gives the speediest effect to that vote? Why? Because that
which the people have voted to have for their constitution, it is
a fair presuraption they raean to have at once. If they want
it at all, and it is certainly known that they do, it is a fair
presuraption that they want it now. If they have declared
that there is a good which they would possess, it is a fair
presuraption that they would possess it now. If they have
declared that there is an evil which they would correct, it
is a fair presumption that they would correct it now. If
they have discovered that on reasons of state, reasons of lib
erty, reasons of policy, it is expedient to render the executive
power and patronage safer, by rendering it less, and so to
abridge it of a class of appointments, and have decided to do
so, it is a fair presumption that they do not mean to wait for
more abuse or more danger, but to have safety now. Con
sider that they are sovereign ; that their right is to have instant
obedience, and instant indulgence. They are not to be dealt
with in such a raatter as so many spendthrift young heirs
approaching one-and-twenty, and to be kept out of their prop
erty by shifts of prudence or selfishness, until their wild oats
are sown. We are not to regard them as incoming tenants
whom we may forcibly or fraudulently resist till we can com
pensate ourselves by strip and waste for the unexpected refusal
of the landlord to renew our lease. They are the good men
of the house, asking entrance into their own ; and whether
they come at evening, or midnight, or earliest dawn of day,
we are to rise and admit them. Prima fronte, on the very
day they voted, they would be held to have changed the consti
tution. But security against fraud, security against revolu
tion, requires some formal and authentic ascertainment of the
result of their day's voting. The article and the resolves which
I have read prescribe such ascertainment; — and now I repeat,
that of two interpretations, each warrranted by the words, and

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 381
each securing an authentic and formal ascertainment of the
fact that a majority desire a change, that interpretation which
accorapHshes it soonest is the true one.
Let the rule be applied to this language. Recurring to the
article of the constitution, you find it declaring, — after pro
viding for the vote, — " if it shall appear that a majority of
the inhabitants voting on the question are ¦ in favor of the
amendraent, it shall become part of the constitution." What
does this condition, " if it shall appear," call for ? Exactly
and merely that it shall be shown; proved, to somebody
authorized to ascertain the fact. Then come the resolves
which authorize a body to ascertain the fact. They authorize
the governor and council to ascertain it by a count. The
moment they have done, " it appears," that is, it is shown ;
proved ; raade known, to a tribunal authorized to find it.
The raoraent " it appears," the fourth section of the tenth
article itself attaches on it, and ordains that it is part of the
constitution. Certainly it so attaches and so ordains, unless
the resolves, in clear terras, go on to provide that some fur
ther counting is to be had, and some further postponement
or suspension is to be allowed. In the absence of sorae such
clear and certain provisions, the old constitution adopts instantly
the new araendraents into its bosom.
Well, turning to the resolves, there is nothing to require a
further count ; there is nothing in terms to suspend or post
pone the will of the people, already made to appear, for another
moraent. On the contrary, they siraply require a return of
the count to the legislature ; they prescribe no duty of re
counting to the legislature ; they declare only that if a raajority
of the votes are in favor of the amendment, — that is, if on
the count by the governor and councU, they are so, — the fact
regularly appears, and the constitution is instantly amended.
They expect, no doubt, in conformity with all your usage, that
the legislature will then make declaration of the fact that the
constitution has been amended. But it is to be a declaration
of a fact as already accomplished ; by the will of the people,
aiUthentically raade to appear to the governor and council.
It cannot therefore be maintained that the construction of
this article and these resolves, which hold, first, that on its
being made to appear that a majority have voted for amend-

382 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
ments, the amendment is adopted ; second, that it is so made
to appear, when it is ascertained by the count of a body
legally authorized to ascertain it ; third, that the governor and
council are so legally authorized ; and, fourth, that no other
count is comraanded, and no postponeraent of the tirae of
taking effect is unequivocally and certainly provided for, and
therefore, that the popular will takes iraraediftte effect, — it
cannot be maintained that this construction does not satisfy all
the language, and provide completely for the ascertainment of
the all-important fact. It follows, that it is the true construc
tion, because it soonest gives to the people what they have
resolved to have.
On these reasons, the judge would seem to have rightly
held that the araendraents were adopted as soon as the state of
the vote appeared to the governor and council, and was notified
by return to the legislature. On these reasons the first ques
tion would therefore seera satisfactorily disposed of. That his
conclusion is fortified by the uniform practical interpretation of
Maine, and that it is fortified by a consideration of the conse
quences of the opposite doctrine, seems clear ; but of this, a
stranger to your legislative history and local politics may
hardly presurae to hazard an opinion.
It has been suggested, however, that even if the amend
ments had become part of the constitution before the governor
issued this commission, they had not yet deprived him of his
prerogative to create a vacancy, and then to fill it. They left
him the power to do so, it has been suggested, untU an actual
election by the people theraselves. This I have called the
secoud question on which Justice Davis had to pass. But is
it any question at all ? What has the opinion of the judges of
Massachusetts to do with it ? In the case submitted to thera,
the amendments did not, in terras, frora the moment of their
adoption, strike out from the constitution the power of the
governor to create a vacancy, and then to fill it. They only
ordained generaUy, that certain classes of officers enuraerated
should be elected by the people, flow the law should stand
until an election was actually made, they left in terms une?;-
pressed. But of your araendraents, one, in terras, strikes out
the old power frora the constitution. The adoption of the
araendraents, then, instantly withdrew it, and there is no case,

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS. 383
and there is no room for conjectural interpretation at all.
Who can say, against terms so clear and so peremptory as these,
that the people meant to endure for a year, or a month, or a
day, the exercise of a prerogative of removal and appointraent,
which they had declared unsafe or inexpedient? They had
abridged that prerogative on general considerations of liberty
and policy ; and why suppose they did not do at once, what
they had deterrained for their security to do at last ?
That the respondent, then, has not mistaken the law in this
behalf, seeras a conclusion reasonably certain. Tbat fair,
learned, able judgraents might differ on it, is past all doubt.
That you differ from him, therefore, no more proves his unfit
ness, his ignorance, his dishonesty, his partisanship, than it
proves your own. If he erred at all, he erred on the side of
the people ; and to thera, when your judgment is rendered, he
must stand or fall.
In taking leave of the cause, Mr. President, the very strong
professional and personal interest which I feel for my client,
will be my excuse for adverting to two or three considerations
on his behalf, to which the justice and candor of this tribunal
wUl not be inattentive. They have been anticipated, perhaps,
already, but the repetition may be indulged.
Let it be recollected, first, that the sense of justice and fair
ness, which is in all men, demands that liberal and generous
allowances be made for him, who in any trust, and on any
field, and in any exigency of duty, is called on suddenly, and
without lights, and without helps, to resolve a problera of diffi
culty, and to act out at once. Of such a raan, so tried, good
faith alone is exacted by the universal sentiment of justice and
kindness. The sailor on the deck, in a mutiny, or upon a lee
shore ; the soldier in the extrerae crisis of battle ; the surgeon
by the side of the unconscious and crushed patient, — all who
are forced on instant and exigent action, — inopes consilii —
are so judged in the long run, and by the sober, manly, second
thought. In such a position, and entitled to such indulgence,
the respondent was placed by circumstances he could not con
trol. He sought delay ; he proposed a mode of invoking the
assistance of his brethren ; he foresaw but too distinctly the
personal crisis in which he was involved. They compelled
him to act, and he acted in the spirit of a raan " who has en
deavored weU."

384 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
Consider, next, that his failing, if he failed,^ leaned to the
side of public virtue. Between the people and the executive ;
between the raaster and the servant ; between the constitution
and those who forgot it, he declared for liberty and for the su
prerae law. Subserviency, cowardice, raeanness, falsehood to
hiraself, all counselled other action. These you may have for
nothing. But will you discourage the nobler and the rarer
qualities of public and official life ?
Acknowledge, further, that if the question before hira had
been thought to be a question of doubt, as it was not, he but
followed the universal habit and doctrine of the courts, — that
the actual possession is to stand for title, till it is clearly shown
to be unlawful. There was an existing possession. The old
officer was there. The old officer clairaed, and pleaded the
constitution and the law. That title he was obliged to exara
ine. That title he was obliged to corapare with the new and
competing title. fle did compare ; his judgment was con
vinced that the old was best. But if he had doubted, should
not the possession be maintained till the doubt was resolved ?
Is not this the doctrine of law, and the practice of the bench ?
What business was it of his, that a governor's comraission was
waved in his face ? It was a conflict of right and demand
between two private parties, one in possession, and the other
out. Could he displace the possession till he found a better
title ? Is not possession title, as a general proposition of law ?
Consider finally, that he conformed to the established and
approved judicial habit and doctrine, and that he followed the
precedents of Maine, frora her first araendraents of her consti
tution to this day. I do not say that these precedents conclu
sively construe these resolves. But I say that the judge who
respects thera as nisi prius ; who accepts thera as primd facie
evidence of the law ; who pauses before he sets up his own
judgraent, or the judgraent of the executive of the day against
them, has given some proof of the possession of the qualities
and character, of which our highest judicial tribunals are or
ought to be composed. With these precedents you are all
familiar. They go back to 1834, now twenty years; and they
seera to deraonstrate that heretofore no legislature has assuraed
to call itself " a party " to " a change of the constitution ; "
that every one instead, has siraply designated a counting body.

ARGUMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF JUDGE DAVIS.
to whora the state of the vote was to be proved ; that e^j^rk
one has regarded the count of the body so designated, alfe
" raaking to appear," and regarded itself as having nothing"
at all to do but to declare what had already been made to
appear, and what amendment had already been completely
and certainly adopted. To have foUowed these precedents
evinces the possession of judicial qualities, and exemplifies a
judicial character, which entitle the respondent, if he stood in
need of it, to the candor and indulgence of an assembly of
honorable minds.
And now, Mr. President, the discussion is closed. It is an
infelicity of the judicial office, that the judge does not, and can
never corae to his own day of trial attended and assisted by a
demonstrative and sustaining popularity. The necessities of
the great trust he stands in prescribes seclusion, and thought,
and the study of books. They prescribe the duty, and they
forra the habit of looking less to the party than to the cause ;
the habit of raeditations on rights more than of intercourse
with men. fle grows forraal, therefore, and reserved, if not
austere. In old age he becomes venerable by the establish
ment of an iUustrious reputation, — we rise up and bless him;
we follow his footsteps and attend him to his grave, with tears,
and reverence, and gratitude. But the earlier and middle life
ofthe good judge, ofthe best judge, has won little of the pop
ularity which follows ; none at all of that which is run after.
The respondent, thus, is here almost alone. I am told, and I
believe, that if his self-respect and good taste would have per
mitted it, if the nature of the charge, if the necessities of the
hour had allowed it, we raight have shown you by the testi
mony of the bar over whom he has had opportunity to preside,
by the testimony of all who have observed his brief, but studi
ous and most busy official life, that already an ornameilt
of the bench, he has a future of distinction and usefulness,
which raay justify any degree of hope of his friends and of the
public. But here and now he seeras alone, — upheld by con
sciousness of his own innocence, and by trust in his judges, of
this convention, and of the people. The soul's calra sunshine,
and the heart-felt joy are his. Sorae circumstances invest hira
and his position with extraordinary interest, fle represents
a grand doctrine of constitutional freedom, dear to Maine as
VOL. II. 33

386 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
are the ruddy drops that visit her large heart. He represents
that transcendent idea of a separation of departments of gov
ernment, without which tyranny is begun already, fle repre
sents that eleraent of security, without which liberty itself is
an empty and dreary thing, and its worship a vain oblation, —
^ security of right under an equal law, and a learned and
incorrupt judge. He coraraands and he has that respect of
God and raan, which is yielded ever to hira who strives to
protect himself, and those he loves, frora oppression and dis
honor. Your kindness thus far he has experienced, and his
counsel have experienced, in bountiful measure. This you
might give or might withhold; but justice he has a right
to deraand ; and justice even this high tribunal is bound to
render.

SPEECH « ON THE POLITICAL TOPICS NOW
PROMINENT BEFORE THE COUNTRY."
DELIVERED AT LOWELL, MASS., OCTOBER 28, 1866.

I HAVE accepted your invitation to this hall with pleasure
— although it is pleasure not unattended by pain.
To raeet you, Fellow-citizens of Lowell and of Middlesex,
between whora, the larger number of whora, and myself, I
may hope frora the terras of the call under which you assera
ble, there is some sympathy of opinion and feeling on the
" political topics uow prominent before the community ; " to
meet and confer, however briefly and imperfectly, on the con
dition of our country, and the duties of those who aspire only
to be good citizens, and are inquiring anxiously what in that
humble yet responsible character they have to do — to raeet
thus, and here — not as politicians, uot as partisans, not as
tirae-servers, not as office-seekers, not as followers of a
raultitude because it is a raultitude, not as sectionafists, but
as sons and daughters of our united and inherited Araerica ;
who love her, filially and fervently for herself; our own — the
beautiful, the endeared, the bounteous ; the imperial and gen
eral Parent ! — and whose hearts' desire and prayer to God is
only to know how we shall serve her best, — this is a pleasure
and a privilege for which I shall be very long and very deeply
in your debt.
And this pleasure, there is here and now nothing to alloy.
Differing as we have done, some of us, through half our lives ;
differing as now we do, and shall hereafter do, on raeans, on
detaUs, on causes of the evil, on raen, on non-essentials —
non-essentials I would say in so far as the demands of theee
most rugged and eventful times are concerned — I think that

388 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
on the question, what is the true issue before us and the capital
danger we have to meet ; on this, and on all the larger ideas,
in all the nobler eraotions which ought to swell the heart and
guide the votes of true raen to-day — through this one sharp
and dark hour we shall stand together, shoulder to shoulder,
though we have never done so before, and raay never do so
again. I infer this from the language of your invitation. The
welcome with which you have met me, allows me to expect so
much. The place we meet in gives assurance of it.
If there is one spot of New England earth rather than
another, on whose ear that strange music of discords to
which they are rallying the files — a little scattered and a
little flinching, thank God ! — ¦ of their Geographical party —
must fall like a fire-bell in the night, it is here ; it is in Mid
dlesex ; it is in Lowell !
If this attempt at corabining States against States for the
possession of the governraent has no danger in it for anybody,
well and good. Let all then sleep on, and take their rest. If
it has danger for anybody, for you, Fellow-citizens of Low
ell, more than for any of New England or as rauch, it has
that danger. Who needs the Union, if you do not ? Who
should have brain and heart enough to coraprehend and em
ploy the means of keeping it, if not you ? Others may be
Unionists by chance ; by fits and starts ; on the lips ; Union
ists when nothing more exciting, or more showy, or more
profitable, casts up. You are Unionists by profession ; Union
ists by necessity ; Unionists always. Others raay find Ver
raont, or Massachusetts, or New Harapshire, or Rhode Island,
large enough for thera. You need the whole United Conti
nent over which the flag waves to-day, and you need it gov
erned, within the liraits of the actual Constitution, by one
supreme will. To secure that vast, and that indispensable
market at horae ; to coraraand in the least degree a steady,
uniforra, or even occasional protection against the redundant
capital, raatured skill, pauper labor, and ebbing and faUing
prices of the Old World at peace ; to enable the looms of
America to clothe the teeming miUions of Araerica ; — you
need a regulation of coraraerce, uniforra, one, the work of
one united mind, which shall draw along our ilUmitable coast

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 389
of sea and lake, between the universal American race on one
side, and all the rest of raankind on the other, a line, not of
seclusion, not of prohibition, but a line of security, and dis
crimination — discrimination between the raw raaterial at least
and the competing product — a Une of social and industrial
boundary behind which our infancy may grow to manhood ;
our weakness to strength ; our " prentice hand " to that skill
which shall hang out the lamp of beauty on the high places of
our wealth, and our power, and our liberty !
Yes, this you need ; and you know how, and where, you
can have it.
How perfectly our springing and yet imraature raanufactur
ing and raechanical interests in 1788 discerned this need, and
with what deep, reasonable, passionate enthusiasra they cele
brated the adoption of the Constitution which held out the
proraise of raeetiug it ! I know very well that all good men; all
far-seeing raen ; all large-brained and large-hearted raen were
glad that day. I recall that grand and exultant exclaraation
of one of them : "It is done; we have become a nation." But
even then it seeraed to some, raore than to others, the dawn
of a day of good things to corae. If you turn to that proces
sion and that pageant of industry, in Philadelphia, on the 4th
of July, 1788, — that grand and affecting draraatic action
through which, on that raagnificent stage as in a theatre, there
were represented the sublirae joy, and the sublirae hopes with
which the bosora of Pennsylvania was throbbing, — then and
thus I think you seem to see, that while the Constitution
promised glory and happiness to all our America, it was to
the labor of America the very breath of life. We hear it
said that it was for trade — foreign and doraestic, largely —
that the new and raore perfect union was forraed, and that
is true. Very fit it was that in that gorgeous day of national
erableras, the silver Delaware should have shown forth promi
nently — decorated and festive — to announce and welcorae
from all her mast-heads the rising orb of American commerce.
Yet was there one piece in the performance opening a still
wider glimpse of its immense utiUties and touching the heart
with a finer eraotion. That large " stage borne on the car
riage of the Manufacturing Society, thirty feet in length, on
which carding raachines, and spinning machines, and weaving
33*

390 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
raachines were displaying the various raanufacture of cotton,
was viewed," says an eye-witness, " with astonishment and de
light by every spectator." " On that stage was carried the
emblem of the future wealth and independence of our coun
try." In that precious forra of industry in which the harvest
of Southern suns and the labor of Northern hands and brains
may meet to produce a fabric for all nations to put on, — the
industry of reason, and of the people, — " in that," says he, " is
a bond of union more powerful than any one clause of the
Constitution." In the motto on that carriage, "May the Union
government protect the manufactures of America," read the
hopes and the necessities of this labor. Such still is your
prayer ; such your right ; as with the fathers so with the
children ! May that same Pennsylvania which so celebrated
the adoption of the Constitution perpetuate it to-day ! Where
soever else the earth raay shake, and the keepers and pillars of
the house may tremble and bow theraselves, let the keystone of
the national arch, intrusted to hold it against the sky, stand
fast in its place of strength and beauty forever !
Pardon me if I have seeraed to find in the mere interests of
Lowell a reason why, if there is a danger, you should be the
first to discern and first to raeet it. I turn frora the interests
of Lowell to the memories of Middlesex ; and I find in them
at least assurance that if there is a danger, your eye wUl see
it and your ear catch it as far and as quick as the old Minute-
raen saw the raidnight signals in the belfrys, and caught the
low raidnight drura-beat. Surely, surely, that iraraortal boast
of Webster will be yours, " Where American liberty raised its
first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained,
there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of
its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if
party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if
folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary
restraint, shall succeed in separating it from the Union — by
which alone its existence is made sure — it will stand, in the
end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked ;
it wiU stretch forth its arra with whatever of vigor it may stUl
retain over the friends who gather around it ; and it will faU
at last, if faU it raust, amidst the proudest monuraents of its
own glory, and on the very spot of its origin." Yes, it was

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 39 1
here, that the American people began to be, and the American
nation was born in a day. There, on the 19th of AprU ; there,
on the 17th of June ; on that narrow green ; beyond that little
bridge ; on those heights of glory ; there, — even as the cloud
of battle parted and the blood of your fathers was sinking
into the ground — the form and faces of the old thirteen
colonies passed away, and the young Republic lifted his fore
head from the " baptism of fire ; " the old provincial flags
were rolled up and disappeared as a scroll, and the radiant
banner by which the united Araerica is known, and shall be,
for a thousand years of history, known to all the world as
one, was handed down from the sky. flere at least shall not
the dismemberment of that nation begin, flere at least the
first star shall not be erased frora that banner !
No, Fellow-citizens of Middlesex. They raay persuade you
that there is no danger in what they are doing ; they may per
suade you that a corabination of sixteen States to wrest the
possession of the government frora the other fifteen, is all
right, all safe, and all necessary. But if they fail in this ; if
they fail to show that whatever they wish or raean to do, they
are not subjecting the Union of America, and the peace and
honor of Araerica, to a trial which raay exceed its strength,
then tell thera they had better try that case in some other
county. Tell them that while the surarait of that monument
catches the rays of the rising and descending sun, and the
returning or departing saUor greets it from his mast-head, it
shall stand the colossal image of a whole country ; and the flag
that floats from it to-day shall float there while the earth bears
a plant, or the sea rolls a wave !
I raeet you for these reasons with pleasure. But I said
and feel that that pleasure is attended close by pain. Sorae of
you will partake of that with rae also. All will coraprehend
it. I do not disguise that I look on the occasion with too
anxious an interest, with too raany fond raeraories of the past,
with too keen a sense of the contrast of the present with the
past, with too much thought of the possible future, for un
mixed pleasure even here. I will not call this presidential
election in advance a peril or a crisis, for that raight be to beg
the question, but I wiU venture in advance to say, that the best
wish a patriot could raake for his country is that she raay

39.2 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
never undergo such another. The first desire of my heart, at
least, is that I raay never see such another. To this desire,
personal considerations do not at all contribute. I should be
ashamed of rayself if they did, although I cannot but wonder
at that discrirainating injustice and insolence of dictation which
claims freedom of thought and purity of motive for itself, and
allows thera to others, and denies thera to me. But this is noth
ing. Is there no one here who shares with me the wish, that his
country, that hiraself, might never see another such a crisis as
this? Is there no one here, — are there not hundreds here, —
who, recalling the presidential elections they have assisted in,
and contrasting their safe and their noble stimulations ; their
sublirae raoraents ; their adrairable influences, as a training
to a closer union, and a truer and intenser American feeling
and life, with this one ; does not confess some anxiety, some
bewilderment, sorae loathing, sorae fear ? Those generous,
aniraated, fraternal contendings of the Araerican people for a
choice of the successor of Washington ; conducted in the narae
and under the control of two great parties ; running, both of
thera, through and through the Union, into every State and
every vicinage, every congressional district, and every school
district, and every parish ; and binding Texas to Maine,
Georgia to New flampshire, Missouri to Massachusetts, by a
new, artificial, and vehement cohesion, — a tie, not mystic, by
which you greeted, every raan greeted, a brother and an ally,
" idem sentientern de republica " ; everywhere that careful,
just, and constitutional recognition on every party banner ; by
every party creed and code ; in every party speech, and song,
and procession of torchlight, — the recognition of an equal
title to love, regard, honor, equality, in each and every state
and region ; that studious and that admirable exclusion of all
things sectional ; all things which supposed the existence of a
conflict of sections ; all opinions, all theories of policy, all enter
prises of phUanthropy, all aims of all sorts in which his geo
graphical and social position could prevent any one American
from sharing alike ; those platforms broad as our continent ;
equal as our Constitution; coraprehensive as our liberty; those
raighty minglings of minds and hearts, in which Webster could
address Virginians in the Capitol Square at Richmond, and
Berrien and Bell and Leigh and Johnson could feel and

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 393
heighten the inspiration of Faneuil flail and Bunker flill, — all
everywhere at home ; — those presidential contests which left
our Union stronger, our rautual acquaintance and respect closer
and deeper, our country a dearer and fairer and grander ideal,
hastening forward the growth of our nationality almost as
much as a foreign war, without its blood, its crirae, and its
cost, — is there no one, are there not hundreds here, who
recall and regret thera ? Contrasted with them and their day,
does not this one, and this time, seem more a dream than a
reality ? Can we avoid the vain wish that it was only and all
a dreara ? Does this attempt to weave and plait tbe two
North wings of the old national parties into a single Northern
one, and cut the Southern wing off altogether, strike you to be
quite as far-sighted and safe as it is new and bold? In the
teraporary and local success which seemed a little while ago to
attend it here, and which led certain small editors, little speak
ers on low stumps, writers of bad novels and forgotten poems,
preachers of Pantheism and revilers of Jefferson, and excellent
gentlemen, so moral and religious that they could not rejoice
at their country's victories over England, — led these people
to suppose they had all at once become your masters and-
mine ; in that temporary and local success did you see nothing
but rose colors and the dawn of the Millennium ? To combine
States against States, in such a system as ours, has it been
generally held a very happy device towards forraing a raore
perfect union and insuring domestic tranquillity ? To combine
them thus against each other geographically, to take the
whole vast range of the free States, lying together, sixteen out
of thirty-one, seventeen millions out of five or six and twenty
millions, — the most populous, the strongest, the most advanc
ing, — and forra thera in battalion against the fewer nurabers
and slower growth, and waning relative power on the other
side ; to bring this sectional majority under party drill and
stimulus of pay and rations ; to offer to it as a party the gov
ernraent of our country, its most coveted honors, its largest
salaries, all its sweets of patronage and place ; to penetrate
and fire so mighty and so compact a mass with the stUl more
delicious idea that they are moving for huraan rights and the
equality of man ; to call out their clergy from the pulpit, the
library, the bedside of the dying, the chair of the anxious

394 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
inquirer, the hearth of the bereaved, to bless such a crusade ;
to put in requisition every species of rhetoric and sophistry, to
impress on the general mind that the end justifies the means ;
that the end here to be attained is to give Kansas to freedom ;
to stanch her blood and put out her fires ; and then to execute
the sublirae and irapressive dograa that all men are born free
and equal ; and that such a Geographical party is a well-
adapted means to that end, — does this strike you as alto
gether in the spirit of Washington, and Franklin, and the
Preamble to the Constitution, and the Farewell Address?
Does it strike you that if carried out it will prove to be a
mere suraraer excursion to Moscow ? Will there be no biv
ouac in the snow ; no avenging winter hanging on retreat ?
No Leipsic; no Waterloo?
Fellow-citizens, if the forraation and growth of this faction
of Northern States against the South has impressed us at all
alike, you appreciate why I said that I raeet you with pain.
It was the pain of anxiety ; the pain of fear. Relieved as I
am frora that in a great degree by the late decisive demonstra
tions frora Pennsylvania and Indiana, we yet feel together that
we have a duty to perform or to atterapt still. That which
we cannot hinder here, we may at least deplore and expose.
That which we cannot do for ourselves. New flampshire,
Connecticut, the great, calm, central mass of States may do
for us. Against that which locally and temporarily is too
strong for our strength here, we may at least protest.
With courtesy then ; with justice to those from whora we
differ; in the fear of God; in the love of our whole Araerica;
in all singleness of heart; appealing frora the new raen to
the old ; to the sober second thought of Massachusetts and
New England; to their judgraent; to their patriotisra, — after
sorae generations, perhaps sorae days, have passed, — let us
put on record our reasons for deliberate and inextinguishable
opposition to this Geographical party.
You see, Fellow-citizens, already what I regard as the issue
we have to try. In their raode of stating that issue, I take
leave totally to differ frora sorae of the organs of this raove
raent here. The question to-day is not as they would frarae
it and force it on us, whether we would have Kansas free soil
or slave soil, any raore than whether we worship au " anti-

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 395
slavery God and believe in an anti-slavery Bible." The ques
tion is this: Shall slavery 'be permitted, through the agency of
extreme Northern or extrerae Southern opinions, to corabine
and array the sixteen States in which it does not exist, and the
fifteen States in which it does exist, into two political parties,
separated by a physical and social boundary, for the election of
president, for the constituting of the two houses of congress,
and the possession of the governraent ? Much trouble it has
caused us ; rauch evil it has done. It is the one stupendous
trial and peril of our national life. But shall it bear this, the
deadliest fruit of all ?
I say, Not so; never ; but certainly not yet. This is the issue.
And now addressing rayself to this issue, the first thing I
have to say is, such a party is absolutely useless for every one
of its own objects which it dares avow. For every one which
it avows it is useless. Every one of thera it is certain to
endanger or to postpone.
But here let me submit a preliminary thought or two.
In trying the question whether the exigencies of the tiraes
demand such a tremendous organization as this, or whether
we are bound to oppose it, I hold it to be time worse than
wasted to get up a disputation in advance as to what party, or
what section is raost to blarae for the occurrences of the last
two years. This is all well enough for politicians. To you
and to rae it is trifling and it is crirainal. If a resort to this
stupendous innovation is necessary and is safe ; if it will work
great, certain, and needful good, and will not forraidably and
probably endanger the doraestic tranquUlity and the raore per
fect union of the States, — forra it, and triuraph in it. If
such a resort is unnecessary ; if it wUl work no certain and
great good; if it will disturb our peace and endanger our
existence, let it be conderaned and punished as raoral treason,
and there an end. Try it, and judge it by itself
What is it to you or rae ; what is it to the vast, innocent, and
quiet body of our countrymen. North or South, whose folly,
whose violence, whose distrust, whose fanaticism for slavery or
against slavery, whose anibition low or high, is responsible for
the past or present ? Leave this to them whose trade is poli
tics, whose trade is agitation, and let us raeet the practical
measure they present us, and pass on that, I know very well

396 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
there are faults on both sides ; faults South, faults North,
faults of parties, faults of administration. We should not have
, voted for the repeal of the Coraproraise. We would have vo
ted, when that thing was done and its restoration was seen to
be irapossible, to secure to Kansas the opportunity, uninvaded,
unawed, uninfluenced, to grow to the raeasure of a State, to
choose her own institutions, and then corae to join the " Grand
Equality." As she is to-day, at rest, at peace, — in some fair
measure so, — revived, respiring, so ought she ever to have
been, if freedora and slavery were to be allowed to raeet breast
to breast upon her surface at all. flerein is fault. Herein is
wrong. Beyond, far back of all this, years before that Corapro
raise, years before that repeal, the historian of sectional antago-
nisras raight gather up raore matter of reciprocal criraination.
Either region raight draw out a specious manifesto enough on
which to appeal to the reason and justice of the world and to
the God of nations, and to the God of battle for that raatter,
if that were all.
But to this great question, thus forced on us. Shall the
States of the North be organized for the purpose oi possessing
the government upon the basis of this party, what are all these
things to the purpose ? Because there has been violence and
blame, are you therefore to fly on a remedy ten thousand tiraes
worse than the disease ? We should like to see slavery cease
frora the earth ; but should we like to see black regiments from
the West Indies landing at Charleston or New Orleans to help
on emancipation ? We would like to see Kansas grow up to
freedom ; but should we like to see the bayonets that storraed
the Redan and the Malakoff' glittering there to effect it ? This
glorifying hira who does his own work, and this denunciation
of hira who holds a slave ; this singing of noisy songs, and this
preaching of Sharpe's rifle serraons ; these lingering laraenta-
tions about the spread of the cotton plant, about the annexing
of Louisiana by Jefferson, and of Florida by John Quincy
Adams, do not touch the question before the nation. That
question is about the new party. That question is on combin
ing the North against the South on slavery to win the govern
raent. Shall that party, shall that atterapt triuraph, or shall it
perish under the conderanation of your patriotism ?
Is that needful ? Is that just? Is that prudent? That is

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 397
the question ; and to that hold up its orators, and poets, and
preachers ; and let the sound and calm judgment of America
decide it.
Soraething else when that is decided, as it seeras now likely
to be, we shall have to do. Sorae changes of administrative
politics raust be and will be had. But in the raean tirae, and
in the first place, the question is. Shall your Geographical party
live or die ?
I have said, then, for my first reason of opposition, that for
any and every one of the objects this new party dares to avow,
it is absolutely useless. It is no more needed for any object
it dares to avow, than thirty thousand of Marshal Pelissier's
Zouaves are needed in Kansas to-day.
And on this question of necessity is not the burden of proof
on him who undertakes to introduce into our political order
and experience so tremendous a novelty as this ? Is not the
presumption in the first instance altogether against getting up
a Geographical party on slavery for possession of the govern
ment? Considering that such a thing, if not necessarily and
inevitably poison, is, however, extrerae medicine at the best ;
that it has been down to this hour admitted to be and pro
claimed to be the one great peril of our system by all who have
loved it best and studied it raost deeply ; that every first-class
intelligence and character in our history of whatever type of
politics, and what is quite as iraportant, the sound and sober
general raind and heart, has held and taught this, is it too rauch
to say that he whose act outrages our oldest, and raost fixed,
and most iraplicit habits of thought and raost cherished tradi
tions on this subject ; who raocks at what we have supposed
our raost salutary and most reasonable fears ; who laughs at a
danger to the American confederacy, at which the firmness of
Washington, the courage of Harailton, and the hopeful and
trusting phUanthropy and phUosophy of Jefferson, confident al
ways of his countryraen, at which these raen trerabled, — is it
too rauch to tell the propounder of this project that he shall
make out its necessity, or he shall be nonsuited on his own
case ? I say to hira, then. Pray confine yourself in the first
instance to the point of necessity. Do not evade that question.
Don't mix others with it. Tell us es^actly what you really
propose to do about slavery, without phrases, and then show us
VOL. II. 34

398 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
that if it ought to be done it is necessary to combine the North
ern States against the South on a presidential election in order
to do it. Speak to this. Don't tell us how provoked you are,
or how provoked the Rev. Mr. This, or the flon. Mr. That,
has corae to be against the South ; how'passionately one South
ern raember spoke, or another Southern meraber acted ; how
wicked it was in Washington to hold slaves, and what a cove
nant with hell a Constitution is which returns the fugitive to
the raaster. Don't exasperate yourself irrelevantly. Don't
raystify or trick us with figures to prove that the seventeen
raillions of people in the Northern States contribute three
fourths of the whole aggregate of $4,500,000,000 of an
nual industrial production. This, if it were true, or were not
true, raight beget vanity, and the lust of sectional dorainion, and
conterapt ; but it is nothing at all to the purpose. Don't say
you want to teach the South this thing or that thing. Don't
say you want to avenge on a section to-day the annexation of
Louisiana or Florida or Texas. Don't keep coming down on
the South ; just condescend to come down on the question.
What are your objects precisely; and how comes this new
and dangerous combination of States necessary to accoraplish
thera ?
What, then, first, are the objects of the Geographical party,
and is such a party necessary for such objects ? I ask now for
its measures. What would it do if it could ?
To fiud out these to reasonable perfection, for me, at least,
has not been easy. It is not easy to know where to look for
the authentic evidence of thera. The Philadelphia platform
and Colonel Fremont's letter of acceptance are part of that
evidence. They are not all — they are not the raost iraportant
part. You raust go elsewhere for it. The actual creed and
the real objects raust be sought in the tone and spirit of their
electioneering ; in the topics of their leaders ; in the aggregate
of the irapression their whole appeal is calculated to raake on
the public raind and the collective feelings of the North. These
speak the airas, these raake up the life, these accoraplish the
raission of a party. By these together judge it.
Much raeditating on this evidence, I arrive at two results. I
find one object distinctly propounded ; one of great interest to
the Northern sentiraent, and one which you and I and all should

SPEECH AT LOWELL.

399

rejoice to see constitutionaUy and safely accoraplished at the
right time and in the right way, — and that is the accession of
Kansas as a free State to the Union. This is one. Beyond,
behind this, more or less dim, raore or less frowning, more or
less glittering, more or less constitutional, there looms another
range or another show of objects, swelling and subsiding and
changing as you look, — "in raany a frozen, many a fiery Alp,"
— cloud-land, to dazzle one raan's eye, to disappear altogether
before the gaze of another, as the showraan pleases. These
are their other objects.
Turn first, then, to that one single practical and specific
raeasure which they present to the North, and on which they
boast theraselves by eminence and exceUence the friends of
Kansas, — the adraission of that territory as a free State.
And now if this is all, will any sane and honest raan, un-
coramitted, tell you that there is a necessity for this treraendous
experiment of an organization and precipitation of North on
South to achieve it ? flave you, has one of you, has one
human being north of the line of geographical separation, a
particle of doubt that if Kansas has peace under the reign of
law for two years, for twelve raonths, the energies of liberty,
acting through unforced, unchecked, and norraal free-soil im
migration, would fiU her with freedora, and the institutions of
freedom, as the waters fiU the sea ? What more than such
peace under such rule of law do you want ? What more does
Mr. Speaker Banks think you want ? Legislation of anybody?
No. Interference by anybody ? No. flear him : —
" Now for this (the repeal of the Compromise) we have a remedy. It
is not that we shall legislate against the South on the subject of slavery.
It is not that we shall raise the question whether in future territories
slavery shall be permitted or not. We lay aside all these questions, and
stand distinctly and simply on the proposition that that which gave peace
to the country in 1820, that which consummated the peace ofthe country
in 1850, ought to bemade good by the government of the United States,
and with the consent of the American people. (Applause.) That is all.
No more, no less — no better, no worse. That is all we ask — that the
acts of 1820 and 1850 shall be made good, in the place of conflagration,
and murder, and civil war for the year 1 856 — by the voice of the Amer
ican people, South, let me say, as well as North. (Applause.) Now, to
do that no legislation is required. It is not necessary that the halls of
congress should be opened again to agitation. We desire the election of
a man to the presidency of the United States of simple views and of de-

400 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
termined will, — a man who will exert the influence of this government in
that portion of the territory of the United States, so as to allow its people
to settle the question for themselves there."
What is this but to say. Put out the conflagration, stop the
reign of violence, give peace, law, and order to rule, and Kan
sas will have freedom, if she does not prefer slavery, as cer
tainly she will not. And such, I take it, is the all but universal
judgment of the North.
Well ; but do they answer, Oh, very true ; but we cannot
have this peace unless the North gets possession of the govern
ment. Mr. Buchanan's administration wiU not insure it. Mr.
Fillraore's adrainistration will not insure it.
I might content rayself with replying that the condition of
Kansas at this hour gives this extravagance to the winds. I
will not say that terrritory to-day is as quiet as Middlesex ;
but I will say that before the next President takes his seat it
will be as free as Middlesex. It has a raajority for freedom,
and it is increasing. Of a population of about thirty thousand,
sorae five thousand only are frora the slave States.
I will not leave it on that reply. With what color of jus
tice, I choose to add, do the leaders of this party assume to
tell you that they alone desire to give or are able to insure
Kansas her only chance to be free ? With what justice do
they tell you that the Deraocratic party, or the Fillraore party,
refuse to give her peace, and all the practical opportunities of
liberty? Do they suppose that we have not read the record
of the last two raonths of the last congress? We, whose
sons and brothers are on that disturbed and sad soil ; we, who
deplore the repeal of the Comproraise quite as rauch as they
do ; we, who should see with exultation and thanksgiving to
God the peaceful victories of freedom in that frontier ; we, who
hate and dread the gamblings of politicians, and the selfish and
low tactics of party, but should rejoice unspeakably to see the
statesmanship of our country securing the government of that
territory to its own free will, — do they suppose that we did
not read, or could not understand, or cannot reraeraber how
the leaders and the members of every party in congress dealt
with this great subject? Republicans the only helpers of
Kansas to freedom, indeed ! How did they propose to reach
the object? By raaking sorae twenty-five thousand people

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 401
into a sovereign State, and bringing it, just as it was, into the
Union under the Topeka constitution ! Yes, you would have
raade them a State extempore. You would have given to
these twenty-five thousand people, organized as absolutely
without law and against law as if two thousand should get
together on Boston Coraraon and make a government, the
same voice in the Senate of the United States which the Con
stitution gives to New York, to Pennsylvania, to Virginia, to
Massachusetts ; the power to turn the scale and decide the
vote on a debate of war and peace, or a treaty of boundary, or
of commerce, or a noraination to the highest judicial or diplo
raatic office in the Constitution.
This they would have done — a raeasure of passion ; an
act for which the file affords no precedent ; revolutionary
alraost ; alraost a crime in the name of Uberty.
Defeated in this, they would do nothing. They would allow
nobody else to do anything. They passed Mr. Dunn's bill to
be sure, — the first one in the history of this government which
legisla!ted huraan beings directly into a state of slavery ; but as
they engrafted the restoration of the Missouri Corapromise into
it, they knew it could not becorae a law, and that goes for
nothing. There they stuck ; and had they not repeatedly an
opportunity to unite in putting out the fires, and stanching the
blood, and hushing the shrieks of Kansas ; in giving her a
cbance to revive and respire ; in giving her a chance to choose
herself of the fruit of the tree of liberty and hve? Yes;
repeatedly. Did they avail theraselves of it ? No. Did they
allow others to do so ? No. No ! Did not Mr. Toombs
present a bill, and did not the Senate pass it and send it to the
House ? Did not this bUl propose an early admission of Kan
sas, — in so far just what the Republicans wanted ? Did it uot
annul the more obnoxious part of the obnoxious laws of the
territorial legislature? Did it not provide for registration
of voters, coraraissioners to take census of inhabitants, and
an interval of araple sufficiency for those whom violence had
expelled to return and assert their rights ? Did not Mr. Hale
of New Hampshire say of this : —
"I take this occasion to say that the bill, as a whole, does great credit
to the magnanimity, to the patriotism, and to the sense of justice of the
honorable Senator who introduced it. It is a much fairer bill than I
34*

402 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
expected from that latitude. I say so because I am always willing and
determined, when I have occasion to speak anything, to do ample justice.
I THINK THE BILL IS ALMOST UNEXCEPTIONABLE."
;
Did the Republicans — when they found that the Missouri
Corapromise could not be restored, nor Kansas be adraitted
instantly under the Topeka constitution — in order to stanch
the blood, and to silence the cry of the territory, the crirae
against which they assumed to prosecute and avenge — give
ground an inch ? Would they take a single step towards tera
porary truce even, or a time to breathe ? Not one, — Mr.
Clayton, Mr. Crittenden in the Senate, and Mr. flaven in the
flouse, held up successively the olive-branch, terapted and
entreated thera, by eloquence, and reason, and feeling, to do
something, if they could not do all, or what they wished, to
close the feast of horrors ! — but not a finger would they lift.
Cold and motionless as the marble columns about them — the
25,000 men and the Topeka constitution should corae in a
State — as they knew it would not — or raurder, arson, and
rapine might waste Kansas, and electioneer for the Geograph
ical party.
I do not say they intended that the reign of terror should
continue in Kansas ; all of them could not have so intended,
I do not say that any of them did. I say that if it had con
tinued, a full share of the responsibUity had been theirs. I
say that it is no thanks to them that it has ceased. I say that
it does uot lie in their raouths to tell the calra, just, and reason
able raen of the North that they are the only party, and a com
bination of States against States the only means, of giving to
Kansas the freedom we all desire for her.
Easy it were in ray judgment to demonstrate or afford the
highest degree of probabUity that their triumph would defeat,
or postpone, or impair and profane the consummation which
they seek. But I ara confined to the question of the necessity
of their raeasures, for "the attainraent of our ends.
So rauch for this function of the new party, the admission
of Kansas as a free State. To this end it is no raore needed
than sixteen black regiraents frora the Leeward Islands.
Beyond this, what are its objects ? With anxious and curi
ous desire to coraprehend the whole of this extraordinary phe
nomenon, I have extrerae difficulty in making these ulterior

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 403
objects out. Sorae of thera are unavowed, I suppose — sorae
of them are avowed in one place and denied in another ;
some of the speakers have one — sorae have another. If you
tell thera their aims are dangerous, unconstitutional, revolu
tionary, Mr. Banks shall reply, " Not a bit of it ; we don't
mean to legislate against the South on slavery at all ; we
don't mean to say that future territories shall not have slavery
if they like it, to their heart's content. We want nothing and
nobody but a President of ' simple views and deterrained will,'
who will allow the ' people of Kansas to settle the question for
theraselves there.' " If thereupon you answer, Well, if this is
all, there really seeras to be no great need of evoking such a
tremendous spirit as the combination of North against South
to reach it ; less force, less fire, less steam, less wear and tear
of raachinery would do the business one would think ; up
rises another, raore fervid, raore glooray, better informed, or
not so cunning, and exclairas, " No, that is not all ! that is
hardly the beginning. We sing and hear a strain of far higher
mood than that ; we have the tide of slavery to roll back ; the
annexation of Louisiana and Texas to avenge or corapensate ;
we too would taste the sweets of power, and we will have
power ; it is a new order of the ages we bring on ; our place
of worship (such is Governor Seward's expression) is neither
in this raountain, nor yet in Jerusalem ; our mission is equality
and freedora to all raen."
To seek, through all this Babel of contradictory and irre
sponsible declarations, what they really design to do, were vain
and idle. To maintain the necessity of organizing a party like
this, to accoraplish no raortal can tell us what, seems pretty
bold dealing with the intelligence of the country. That which
it is impossible to state, it is not apparently needful to try to
do. If there is no perplexity of plot to be unravelled, why is
such a divinity invoked ? If there is one, wUl they show us
what it is ?
I must not forget in this sesirch for their objects, outside of
Kansas, that they have been rauch in the habit of sending us
to the Declaration of Independence to find them. Their plat
form does so ; their orators are said to do so. If I under
stand Governor Seward, in his first speech in Detroit, he does
so. Reverend teachers of Republicanism do so. They are

404 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
the party of the Declaration of Independence, and not a Geo
graphical party. Here are two of their resolutions : —
" Resolved, That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the
Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution,
are essential to the preservation of our republican institutions ; and that
the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the
States, shall be preserved.
" Resolved, That, with our republican fathers, we hold it to be self-
evident truth that all men are endowed with inalienable right to ' life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' and that the primary object and
ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to
all persons within its exclusive jurisdiction ; that as our republican fathers,
when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained
that no person should be deprived of ' life, liberty, or property,' without
due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the
Constitution against all attempts to violate it, for the purpose of establish
ing slavery in the territories df the United States, by positive legislation
prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the author
ity of congress, of a territorial legislature, or any individual or association
of individuals., to give legal assistance to slavery in any territory of the
United States, while the present Constitution shcdl be maintained."
And yet what information does this afford about the object
of the new party ? How do vve know what they mean to do,
and whether it ought to be ,done, and whether a corabination
of free States to do it is fit and is necessary any the raore for
this ? It is a thing so extraordinary for a political party to
put forward the Declaration of Independence as its platforra,
or as a prorainent and distinguishing part of its platforra, and
to solicit the votes of a section of the States of this Union by
the boast that it claims some special and characteristic relation
to that imraortal act and coraposition ; that it means to put it
to some use, and derive frora it sorae power, or sorae rule of
interpretation, or some raotive to governmental action which
are new and peculiar to itself, — that we pause on it with
wonder, and perplexity, and alarra.
If a newly organized political party should announce that its
principles were the principles of the Bible, and its spirit and
aims the spirit and airas of the Bible ; should put this osten
tatiously in its platforra, write it on its flags, carry it about by
torchlight, thunder it frora its pulpits and frora the stands of
its mass-raeetiug speakers, lay or clerical ; should you not
feel sorae small or some considerable confusion, perplexity.

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 405
misgiving, mirth, and fear in view of such demonstration ? If
you did not, or if you did, think it a poor, arrogant, impious,
and hypocritical raethod of electioneering, would you not wish
to know with a trifle raore of precision and fulness what were
these principles, and that spirit, and those airas of the Bible
thus suddenly adopted into the creed of a party ? If they told
you they meant those principles and that spirit " promulgated
in the Bible " and " embodied in the Constitution," should you
feel that you knew rauch raore than you did before? So
here. What do these raean by this adoption of the Declara
tion of Independence into their creed ? What are " those
principles promulgated" in it, and ^^ embodied in the Consti
tution ? " The Declaration announces all men to be born free
and equal, and to have certain inalienable rights, among which
is the right to liberty. The Constitution sends back the fugi
tive slave to his master. Is this a case of a principle joromw^
gated in one, and embodied in the other ? If not, how does
their platform deal with it ? What are the " principles so
embodied?" In what article, in what word, are they so?
Which do they go for, the " promulgation," or the " embodi
ment ? " What practical legislation, or adrainistration, are they
supposed to prescribe or warrant ? Nay — corae a little closer;
what do they intend to say they get from the Declaration, or
do b}' means of the Declaration, more than anybody else gets
from it, and does by means of it ? Would they venture the
proposition that the Federal Governraent derives any powers,
any one power from that source ? Certainly not ; or if so, it
is the most dangerous and most revolutionary heresy ever yet
promulgated. Would they say that they call in the Declara
tion to interpret the language of the Constitution ? I suppose
not ; for, that the meaning of those who constructed that con-
suraraate frarae of government, and weighed, measured, and
staraped its words of gold, and drew, or sought to draw, with
so much precision and certainty, the delicate line which parts
the powers given to the Union frora those retained to the
States or the people, and therein ordained that all powers not
delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the States,
are reserved respectively to the States or the people, — that
this language, in this instruraent of 1787^ can he interpreted,
enlarged or narrowed, darkened or illustrated by the language

406 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of that other instruraent, not less renowned, penned in 177^,
in a tirae and for a purpose so different, — that thrUling appeal
to the reason and justice of nations, in which a people assurae
to vindicate upon grounds of natural right their claim to take
their place in the great equality of States, and then announce
their sublime decision to make their claim good by revolution
and battle — composed to engage the sympathies of mankind
for the new nation, and to lift up its own spirit to the demands
of the great crisis, — that the latter of these papers, in point
of time, is to be interpreted by the former in any sense, of
which any jurist, or any reader of his mother-tongue, can forra
conception, is a proposition too extravagant to be iraputed to
the author of the platform.
Well, then, if they do not use the Decla,ration as a source of
power, nor as a help to construction, what do they raean to do
with, or do by it ? flow profiteth it thera any raore than others ?
than us ? Why, they would say they were going to execute
their constitutional powers "in the spirit of the Declaration."
That is it, is it ? They are to take the constitutional powers
as they exist, — to find thera as you find thera, and as all find
thera, by just and legitiraate interpretation. But the difference
between you and thera is, they " are going to execute thera in
the spirit of the Declaration." Well, now, what does even this
mean ? What sort of execution is this to insure ? flow do
you apply your rule ? Nay — what is the rule ? What is
the spirit of the Declaration in this behalf? Is it anything
more than its raeaning ? It is what the framers of it, the
congress of 177^, then meant, by their language, is it not ?
Did they raean then to assert that slaves had an inalienable
right to liberty ? Did they mean to make any assertion at all
upou the subject of master and slave ? Was that application
of this generality of natural right in their contemplation in
any, the least degree ? Were they consciously and inten
tionally conceding and proclairaing that it was a sin to hold a
slave and a duty to eraancipate ?
flow the student of the history of that act may answer this
inquiry is not now to the purpose. The question is not now
on the actual principles of the Declaration as its fraraers un
derstood and limited and applied them. It is on the raeaning
of the fraraers of the Republican platforra. What is their

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 4O7
"spirit of the Declaration," and how do they mean to use it;
and what do they raean to draw from it in executing the Con
stitution ? If they will point out one single object they can
or design to accoraplish through it, which other parties have
not accoraplished and cannot accomplish, by administering the
governraent upon these principles of equal and exact justice to
all the States and all the sections, in the purpose of promoting
internal tranquillity and a raore perfect Union, which have here
tofore constituted the recognized creed of American statesman
ship, we can then judge whether this parade of that instru
raent and that act in their platform has any meaning at all,
and if so whether what is meant is needful or safe. We can
then judge whether they have used a form of language iii-
tended to lead the passionate and unthinking to believe they
intended something, and yet to leave theraselves at liberty to
protest when exarained on it that they intended nothing. We
can then judge whether this language of their creed is revolu
tionary and dangerous, or whether it merely
" Palters with us in a double sense ;
That keeps the word of promise to our ear.
And breaks it to our hope."
Holding then, Fellow-citizens, the clear and settled convic
tion that this corabination of Northern States against the South
is totally unnecessary for any purpose, I record ray protest
against the atterapt to forra it and give it power. No interest
of freedora requires or will be helped by it. No aspects of
slavery justify it. It will not give liberty to an acre, or to a
man, one hour sooner than they will have it without. It will
uot shorten or lighten the rule or limit the spread of slavery
in the least degree.
And is not this enough to deter you from an innovation so
vast, an experiraent so untried, an agency of influences so in
capable to be calculated ?
But what if, raore than novel and raore than needless, it
proves only an enorraous evil ? What if it proves, of all the
fruits that slavery has borne yet, the deadliest ?
To raany I know the bare iraagination of such fear is raat
ter of mirth. Seeing farther than I can see, or raore sanguine,
or more bold, for thera it seeras without terror ; or promises
only good, or a preponderance of good, or to be a necessary

408 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
evil and a risk worth taking at the worst. Let rae dare to
avow that which I assuredly believe and deeply feel. To rae,
to raany thoughtful raen whose opinions are far raore important
than mine, there is occasion for the wisdom of fear.
The grounds and the particulars of the apprehension with
which such men raay regard this party, there is no need here
and now to open at large.
We have corae so near to the tirae when practical conse
quences are to take the place of our conjectures, — or to be
scattered to the winds forever or for a space, if this party is
defeated, — that I may forbear to display them in detail. I
compress ray convictions upon the whole subject of the pro
posed organization in a brief, articulate enuraeration, and de
liver thera to your judgraent.
They are : —
That in the exact sense in which the language has been
used, and the thing been held out for warning in the Farewell
Address, and by all the illustrious men of both schools of our
politics, of Washington and of Jefferson, whora heretofore the
American people has regarded as its safest and most sagacious
councillors, — but on a scale raore gigantic and swayed by
passions far raore incapable of control or raeasure than they
have any of them feared, — it is a Geographical party, — con
fined exclusively in fact and in the nature of things to one of
the two great regions into which the American States are distrib
uted ; seeking objects, resting on principles, cultivating dispo
sitions, and exerting an aggregate of influence and irapressions
calculated to unite all on one side of the line which parts the
two regions against all on the other, upon the single subject on
which, without the utraost exercise of forbearance, sense, and
virtue, they cannot live at peace ; but for which they could not
fail to be one people forever ; by reason of which their dis
ruption is possible at all tiraes.
That in the sense of the language heretofore eraployed in
Araerican politics and history to describe this kind of thing
there is not now and there never has been another Geograph
ical party ; that both the other two which now divide or now
unite the people, — extending through every State North and
South, professing political and industrial creeds, seeking ob
jects, breathing a spirit and presenting candidates which every

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 4O9
region may own alike, exerting each an aggregate of influ
ence and impression calculated to foster an American feeling
and not a sectional aniraosity ; — that both these — whatever
else may be alleged against thera — are national parties.
That the Geographical party, in its nature and spirit and
immediate object of taking possession of the government, is
founded in essential injustice to the section which it excludes ;
that in ethics and reason these States are partners, and stock
holders, and contractors each with all, — a partnership, an in
corporation for all the good and glory and progress to which
national life may aspire ; that therefore, although the will of
the raajority is the law of the mighty concern, yet that that
requires a will obedient to justice ; and it is not just that a
section, or a class of partners should associate araong them
selves by that organization called a party, to appropriate, to
the practical exclusion of the rest, the government, and all the
honor, profit, and power which belongs to its possession and
administration, for an indefinite period, or for a presidential
term, forasmuch as it violates or deserts the great implied
agreement of the society — implied in the act of coming into
the federal tie — that a property, a privilege, a power, a glory
so large, so desirable, as the possession and adrainistration
of the governraent, shall pass about by a just and equitable
rotation, and every section shall at all times have its share :
That if the manner in which the South has perforraed its
duties to the Union and to the Northern section of States be
regarded as a whole, frora the adoption of the Constitution to
this day, it affords no justification of the atterapt to take pos
session of the governraent, to the exclusion of that sectiou of
States ; that her federal obligations, as- such, have been dis
charged as the general fact ; that she has set no example of
such sectional exclusion as this; that her federal life and activ
ities have been exerted in and through national parties, and as
a branch or wing thereof ; that she has supplied her propor
tionate share of capacity and valor to the service of the whole
country, and that the bad language, and violent acts, and trea
sonable devices of her bad men create no case for the injus
tice here raeditated :
That the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the dis
position of the South to form Kansas into a slave State, while
VOL. II. 35

410 " MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
we conderan and deplore the former, and deraand that the free
will of all its people shall be perraitted to disappoint the latter,
creating no necessity for the Geographical party, afford no
excuse for the injustice raeditated:
That such a party is dangerous to the internal tranquillity
and general welfare of the United States, and that it tends by
probable and natural consequence less or raore remote to their
separation. Such was once, was ever, until to-day, the universal judg
ment of wise and honest men and true patriots ; and by their
counsels it is safe, moral, and respectable to abide.
That such a party, militant or triumphant, electioneering for
the adrainistration or in possession of it, must exert influences
of wide and various evil, even whether they do or do not reach
to the overthrow of our system ; that it accustoras the people
of each section to turn frora contemplating that fair and grand
ideal, the whole America, and to find their country in' one of
its fragments ; a revolution of the public affections, and a sub
stitution of a new public life ; that it accustoras them to exag
gerate, intensify, and put forward into everything the one ele
ment of discord and diversity, and to neglect the cultivation of
the less energetic elements of resemblance and union ; that, in
fixing their attention on a single subject, and that one appealing
simply to passion and emotion, to pride, to fear, to moral sen
sibilities, it exasperates and embitters the general temper, and
sows the seeds of sentiments which we did not inherit, but
which we raay transrait, — sentiraents of the vehement and en
ergetic class which forra and unform nations ; that it has to an
extraordinary degree changed the tone of political discussion in
this its own section, and raade it intolerant, immoral, abusive
and insolent to those who differ, to an extent to which our party
disputes have before afforded no exaraple ; that it tends to place
moderate men and national raen, North and South, in a false
position, by presenting to thera the alternative of treason to the
whole or treason to the section, — thus putting moderate coun
sels to shame, and destroying the influence which might help
to restore the good temper and generous affection of the parts
and the whole.
That while it is organized on the single basis of resistance
to what it calls the slave power, it misconceives or disregards

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 4U
the true duties of the patriotisra, philanthropy, and Christianity
of the Free States in the raatter of slavery ; that it excites ha
tred of the raaster, but no prudent, nor reasonable, nor useful
love of the slave ; that to hinder the mere extension of that
relation over more area, although one good thing, is not the
only one demanded ; that even that may be rendered worse
than useless by the mode of seeking to effect it ; that whatso
ever else we do or attempt, in whatsoever else our power comes
short of our wishes in this regard, we are bound to know that
discords and animosity on this subject between North and
South, however promoted, do but retard the training for free
dom and postpone the day of its gradual and peaceful attain
ment. If ye so hate the raaster, or so fear hira, or so contend
with him, that ye rivet the fetters of the slave or lengthen the
term of his slavery, what reward have ye or has he ?
With these opinions, Fellow-citizens, I aira, in this election,
at one single object ; I feel but one single hope, and one single
fear. To me, all of you, all men who aim at that object aud
share that hope and that fear, seem allies, brothers, partners of
a great toil, a great duty, and a common fate. For the hour,
opinions upon other things, old party creeds adapted for quiet
times, old party names and syrabols and squabbles and differences
about details of administration, seera to me hushed, suspended,
irrelevant, trifling, — the sraall cares of a master of cereraonies
in the palace on the morning of the revolution, about red heels,
small-clothes, and buckles in the shoe, within an hour of the
final storm. I care no more now whether my co-worker is a
Democrat, or an American, or an old Whig, a Northern raan or
a California man, than you should care if a fire fell on your
city in winter and was devouring your workshops and streets
one after another, and houseless women and children and old
men and sick were seen hovering on the side of the river in
the snow, whether he who passed or received your buckets was
rocked in his cradle on this side of the sea or the other ; wheth
er he was an Arminian or Calvinist ; a ten-hours' labor man
or a twenty-four hours' labor raan. The election once over, we
are our several selves again. " If we get well," the sick
man said, when with difficulty reconcUed to his enemy, both be
ing supposed dying, "if we get well, it all goes for nothing."
Certainly somewhat there is in the position of all of us a

41£ MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
little trying, — ties of years, which knit some of us together,
are broken; cold regards are turned on us, and bitter language
and slander, cruel as the grave, is ours.
" I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me."
You have decided, Fellow Whigs, that you can best con
tribute to the grand end we all seek, by a vote for Mr. FUlmore.
I, a Whig all my life, a Whig in all things, and, as regards all
other names, a Whig to-day, have thought I could discharge
ray duty raost effectually by voting for Mr, Buchanan and Mr.
Breckenridge ; and I shall do it. The justice I ara Ijut too
happy in rendering you, wiU you deny to me ? In doing this,
I neither join the Democratic party, nor retract any opinion on
the details of its policy, nor acquit it of its share of blarae in
bringing on the agitations of the hour. But there are traits,
there are sentiments, there are specialties of capacity and of
function, that raake a party as they make a man, which fit it
in an extraordinary degree for special service in special crises,
— to raeet particular forras of danger by exactly adapted resist
ance — to fight fire with fire — to encounter by a sharper, more
energetic, and raore pronounced antagonism the precise type of
evil which assails the State. In this way every great party
successively becoraes the saviour of the Constitution. There
was never an election contest that in denouncing the particu
lars of its policy I did not admit that the characteristic of the
Democratic party was tbis : that it had burned ever with that
great master-passion this hour demands — a youthful, veheraent,
exultant, and progressive nationality. Through some errors,
into some perils,it has been led by it; it may be so again ; we
raay require to temper and restrain it, but to-day we need it
all, we need it all ! — • the hopes — the boasts — the pride —
the universal tolerance — the gay and festive defiance of foreign
dictation — the flag — the rausic — all the eraotions — all the
traits — all the energies, that have won their victories of war,
and their miracles of national advancement, — the country needs
them all now to win a victory of peace. That done, I will pass
again, happy and content, into that rainority of conservatisra in
which I have passed ray fife.
To sorae, no doubt, the purport and tone of much that I have
said may seem to be the utterance and the spirit of fear. Pro-

SPEECH AT LOWELL. 413
lessors araong their classes, preachers to iraplicit congregations,
the raen and woraen of emotion and sentiment, wiU raock at
such apprehensions. I wish thera joy of their discernraent ; of
the depth of their readings of history; of the soundness of
their nerves. Let me excuse rayself in the words of an Eng
lish statesraan, then and ever conspicuous for spirit and cour
age, the present prirae minister of England, in a crisis of
England far less urgent than this. " Tell rae not that this is
the language of intimidation ; tell rae not that I ara appealing
to the fears instead of to the reason of the flouse. In raatters
of such high concern, which involve not personal and individ
ual considerations, but the welfare of one's country, no raan
ought to be asharaed of being counselled by his fears. But the
fears to which I appeal are the fears which the brave raay ac
knowledge, and the wise need not blush to own. The fear to
which I appeal is that early and provident fear which Mr.
Burke so beautifully describes as being the raother of safety.
' Early and provident fear,' says Mr. Burke, ' is the mother
of safety, for in that state of things the mind is firm and col
lected, and the judgraent unerabarrassed ; but when fear and
the thing feared corae on together and press upon us at once,
even deliberation, which at other tiraes saves us, becoraes our
ruin, because it delays decision ; and when the peril is instant,
decision should be instant too.' To this fear I ara not asharaed
of appealing ; by this fear lef^islators and statesraen ought ever
to be ruled ; and he who will not listen to this fear, and refuses
to be guided by its counsel, raay go and break his lances against
windraiUs, but the court, of chancery should enjoin him to ab
stain frora meddling with public affairs."
They taunt you with being "Union-savers." I never thought
that a sarcasm of the first raagnitude, but as raen can but do
their best, let it go for what they think it worth. I take for
granted, Fellow-citizens, that you, that all of us, despise cant
and hypocrisy in all things, — the feigning a fear not felt, the
cry of peril not believed to exist, all raeanness and all wicked
ness of falsehood in our dealings with the raind of the people.
But 1 take it for granted, too, that we are above the cowardice
and imraorality of suppressing our sense of a danger, threaten
ing precious interests and possible to be averted, frora the dread
of jokers of jokes ; and that we are above the folly of yielding
35 *

414 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
that vast advantage which deep convictions give to earnest raen
in the dissensions of the Republic. Think what a thing it were
to win the proud and sounding narae in reality which they be
stow in derision ! Suppose, only suppose it so for the argu
ment, that there is danger, over-estimated perhaps by the so
licitude of filial love, but real or probable and less or more
remote, — suppose, merely for the supposition, that Wash
ington had reason to leave that warning against this kind of
geographical combinations, under all pretexts, and that this
one coraes within the spirit and the terms of that warning, —
suppose it to be so that we are right ; that vehement passions,
eager philanthropy, moral emotions not patient nor comprehen
sive of the indispensable limitations of political duty ; that an
ger, pride, ambition, the lust of sectional power, the jealousy
of sectional aggression, the pursuit even of ends just and desir
able by means disproportioned and needless and exasperating
— the excess and outbreak of virtues, by which more surely
than by vices a country may be undone, — that these all work
ing in an unusual conjuncture of affairs and state of public
temper, have exposed and are exposing this Union to danger
less or raore remote, — and then suppose that by sorae word
seasonably uttered, some vote openly and courageously given,
some sincere conviction plainly expressed, we could do sorae
thing to earn the reality of the praise which they give us in
jest, — soraething for the safety, something for the peace, of
this holy and beautiful house of our fathers, — something, were
it ever so little, — would not this be compensation for the laugh
ter of fools ; aye ! for alienated friendships, averted faces, and
the serpent tooth of slander, — a thing worth dying for, and
even worth having lived for ?

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.
AN ORATION DELIVEEED IN BOSTON ON THB EIGHTT-SECOND ANNTVERSAEY OF
AMEEICAN INDEPENDENCE, JULY 5, 1858.

It is well that in our year, so busy, so secular, so discord
ant, there coraes one day when the word is, and when the
eraotion is, " Our couutry, our whole country, and nothing but
our country." It is well that law, our only sovereign on
earth ; duty, not less the daughter of God, not less within her
sphere suprerae ; custora, not old alone, but honored and useful;
meraories; our hearts, — have set a tirae in which, — scythe,
loom, and anvil stilled, shops shut, wharves silent, the flag, —
our flag unrent, — the flag of our glory and commeraoration
waving on mast-head, steeple, and highland, we raay corae to
gether and walk hand in hand, thoughtful, adrairing, through
these galleries of civil greatness ; when we raay own together
the spell of one hour of our history upon us all ; when faults
may be forgotten, kindnesses revived, virtues reraerabered and
sketched unblaraed ; wheu the arrogance of reforra, the excesses
of reforra, the strifes of parties, the rivalries of regions, shall
give place to a wider, warraer, and juster sentiment ; when turn
ing from the corners and dark places of offensiveness, if such the
candle lighted by malignity, or envy, or censoriousness, or truth,
has revealed anywhere, — when, turning from these, we may go
up together to the serene and secret mountain-top and there
pause, and there unite in the reverent exclaraation, and in the
exultant prayer, " flow beautiful at last are thy tabernacles !
What people at last is like unto thee ! Peace be within thy
palaces, and joy within thy gates! The high places are
thine, and there shalt thou stand proudly, and innocently, and
securely."

416 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
Happy, if such a day shall not be desecrated by our service !
flappy, if for us that descending sun shall look out on a raore
loving, raore elevated, raore united Araerica ! These, no less,
no narrower, be the airas of our celebration. These always
were the true aims of this celebration. In its origin, a recital
or defence of the grounds and principles of the Revolution,
now demanding and perraitting no defence, all taken for
granted, and all had by heart ; then soraetiraes wasted in a
parade of vainglory, cheap and vulgar, soraetiraes profaned
by the attack and repulse of partisan and local rhetoricians ;
its great work, its distinctive character, and its chief lessons
reraain and vindicate theraselves, and will do so while the eye
of the fighting or the dying shall yet read on the stainless,
araple folds the superscription blazing still in light, " Liberty
and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
I have wished, therefore, as it was ray duty, in doing rayself
the honor to join you in this act, to give some direction to your
thoughts and feelings, suited at once to the nation's holiday,
and seasonable and useful in itself, flow difficult this may
be, I know. To try, however, to try to do anything, is easy,
and it is Araerican also. Your candor will raake it doubly
easy, and to your candor I coramit rayself.
The birthday of a nation, old or young, and certainly if
young, is a tirae to think of the raeans of keeping alive the
nation. I do not raean to say, however, because I do not
believe, that there is but one way to this, the direct and the
didactic. For at last it is the spirit of the day which we
would cherish. It is our great annual national love-feast
which we keep ; and if we rise from it with hearts larger,
beating fuller, with feeling purer and warmer for America,
what signifies it how frugaUy, or how richly, or how it was
spread ; or whether it was a strain on the organ, the trurapet
tones of the Declaration, the prayer of the good man, the
sympathy of the hour, or what it was, which wrought to that
end? I do not, therefore, say that such an anniversary is not a
tirae for thanksgiving to God, for gratitude to raen, the living
and the dead, for tears and thoughts too deep for tears, for
eulogy, for exultation, for all the raeraories and for all the con
trasts which soften and lift up the general raind. I do not

ADDRESS ON THE POURTH OF JULY. 417
say, for exaraple, that to dwell on that one iraage of progress
which is our history ; that iraage so grand, so dazzling, so
constant ; that streara now flowing so far and swelling into so
iramense a flood, but which burst out a small, choked, uncer
tain spring from the ground at first ; that transition frora the
Rock at Plymouth, from the unfortified peninsula at James
town, to this America which lays a hand on both the oceans, —
frora that heroic yet feeble folk whose aUowance to a raan by
the day was five kernels of corn, for three months no corn, or
a piece of fish, or a moulded reraainder biscuit, or a limb of a
wild bird ; to whora a drought in spring was a fear and a
judgment, and a call for humUiation before God ; who held
their breath when a flight of arrows or a war-cry broke the
innocent sleep or startled the brave watching, — frora that
handful, and that want, to these raiUions, whose area is a con
tinent, whose harvests might load the board of famishing na
tions, for whora a world in arms has no terror ; — to trace the
long series of causes which connected these two contrasted
conditions, the Providences • which ordained and guided a
growth so stupendous ; the dominant race, sober, earnest,
constructive, — changed, but not degenerate here ; the influx
of other races, assimilating, eloquent, and brave ; the fusion of
all into a new one ; tbe sweet stimulations of liberty ; the re
raoval by the whole width of oceans frora the establishments of
Europe, shaken, tyrannical, or burdened ; the healthful virgin
world; the universal progress of reason and art, — universal
as civilization ; the aspect of revolutions on "the human mind;
the expansion of discovery and trade ; the developing senti
ment of independence ; the needful baptisra of wars ; the
brave raen, the wise men ; the Constitution, the Union ; the
national Ufe and the feeling of union which have grown with
our growth and strengthened with our strength, — I do not
say that raeditations such as these raight not teach or deepen
the lesson of the day. All these things, so holy and beautiful,
all things Araerican, may afford certainly the means to keep
America alive. That vast panorama unrolled by our general
history, or unroUing ; that eulogy, so just, so fervent, so splen
did, so approved ; that electric, seasonable meraory of Wash
ington ; that purchase and that dedication of the dwelling and
the tomb, the work of woraan and of the orator of the age ;

418 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
that record of his generals ; that visit to battle-fields ; that
reverent wiping away of dust frora great urns ; that specula
tion, that dreara of her past, present, and future ; every ship
builded on lake or ocean ; every treaty concluded ; every acre
of territory annexed ; every cannon cast ; every machine in
vented ; every raile of new railroad and telegraph undertaken ;
every dollar added to the aggregate of national or individual
wealth, — these all as subjects of thought, as raotives to pride
and care, as teachers of wisdora, as agencies for probable good,
raay work, raay insure, that earthly immortality of love and
glory for which this celebration was ordained.
My way, however, shall be less ambitious and less indirect.
Think, then, for a moraent, on American nationality itself;
the outward national life, and the inward national sentiraent ;
think on this ; its nature, and some of its condiiions and some
of its ethics — I would say, too, sorae of its dangers, but
there shall be no expression of evil oraen in this stage of the
discourse, and to-day, at least, the word is safety, or hope.
To know the nature of American nationality, exaraine it first
by contrast, and then exaraine it in itself.
In sorae of the eleraental characteristics of political opinion,
the Araerican people are one. These they can no raore re
nounce for substance than the highest surarait of the highest
of the White flills, than the peak of the Alleghanies, than the
Rocky Mountains can bow and cast themselves into the sea.
Through all their history, from the dawn of the colonial life to
the brightness of this rising, they have spoken thera, they
have written thera, they have acted them, they have run over
with them. In all stages, in all agonies, through all report,
good and evil, — some learning frora the golden tiraes of an
cient and raediseval freedora, Greece and Italy and Geneva,
from Aristotle, frora Cicero and Bodinus, and Machiavel and
Calvin ; or later, frora H-arrington and Sidney and Rousseau ;
sorae learning, all reinforcing it directly frora nature and na
ture's God, — all have held and felt that every raan was equal
to every other man ; that every raan had a right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, and a conscience unfettered ; that
the people were the source of power, and the good of the peo
ple was the political object of society itself. This creed, so
grand, so broad, — in its general and duly qualified, so true, —

address on THE FOURTH OF JULY. 419
planted the colonies, led them through the desert and the sea
of ante-revolutionary life, rallied them aU together to resist the
attacks of a king and a rainister, sharpened and pointed the
bayonets of all their battles, burst forth frora a raillion lips,
beamed in a miUion eyes, burned in a million bosoms, sounded
out in their revolutionary eloquence of fire and in the Declara
tion, awoke the thunders and gleamed in the lightning of
the deathless words of Otis, fleury, and Adams, was graved
forever on the general mind by the pen of Jefferson and Paine,
survived the exciteraents of war and the necessities of order,
penetrated and tinged all our constitutional coraposition and
policy, and all our party organizations and noraenclature, and
stands to-day, radiant, defiant, jocund, tiptoe, on the suraraits
of our greatness, one authoritative and louder proclaraation to
humanity by Freedora, the guardian and the avenger.
But in sorae traits of our politics we are not one. In sorae
traits we differ frora one another, and we change from our
selves. You may say these are subordinate, executory, instru
raental traits. Let us not cavil about naraes, but find the
essences of things. Our object is to know the nature of Araer
ican nationality, and we are attempting to do so, first, by con
trasting it with its antagonisms.
There are two great existences, then, in our civil life, which
have this in comraon, though they have nothing else in cora
mon, that they may come in conflict with the nationality which
I describe ; one of them constant in its operation, constitu
tional, healthful, auxiliary, even ; the other rarer, illegitiraate,
abnorraal, terrible ; one of them a force under law ; the other
a violence and a phenomenon above law and against law.
It is first the capital peculiarity of our systera, now a cora-
monplace in our politics, that the affections which we give to
country we give to a divided object, the States in which we
livp and the Union by which we are enfolded. We serve two
masters. Our hearts own two loves. We live in two countries
at once, and are commanded to be capacious of both, flow
easy it is to reconcile these duties in theory ; how reciprocally,
more than compatible, how helpful and independent they are
in theory ; how in this respect our system's difference raakes
our systera's peace, and frora these blended colors, and this
action and counteraction, how marvellous a beauty, and how

420 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
grand a harmony we draw out, you all know. PracticaUy you
know, too, the adjustment has not been quite so siraple. flow
the Constitution attempts it is plain enough. There it is; litera
scripta manet, and heaven and earth shall pass before one jot
or one tittle of that Scripture shall fail of fulfilment. So we
all say, and yet how men have divided on it. How they
divided in the great convention itself, and in the very presence
of Washington, flow the people divided on it. flow it has
created parties, lost and given power, bestowed great reputa
tions and taken them away, and colored and shaken the uni
versal course of our public life ! But have you ever consid
ered that in the nature of things this must be so ? flave you
ever considered that it was a federative systera we had to
adopt, and that in such a systera a conflict of head and mem
bers is in some form and to some extent a result of course ?
There the States were when we becarae a nation. There they
had been for one hundred and fifty years — for one hundred
and seventy years. Some power, it was agreed on all hands,
we raust delegate to the new government. Of some thunder,
some insignia, sorae bearas, sorae raeans of kindling pride,
winning gratitude, attracting honor, love, obedience, friends,
all iDcn knew they raust be bereaved, and they were so.
But when this was done, there were the States still. In the
scherae of every statesman they remained a component part,
unannihilated, indestructible. In the scheme of the Constitu
tion, of comproraise itself, they reraained a coraponent part, in
destructible. In the theories of all publicists and all specu
lators they were retained, and they were valued for it, to hin
der and to disarra that centralization which had been found to
be the danger and the weakness of federal liberty. And then
when you bear in raind that they are sovereignties, quasi, but
sovereignties still ; that one of the most dread and transcen
dent prerogatives of sovereignties, the prerogative to take life
and liberty for crirae, is theirs without dispute ; that in the
theories of sorae schools they raay claira to be parties to the
great compact, and as such may, and that any of them raay,
secede from that compact when by their corporate judgraent
they deera it to be broken fundamentally by the others, and
that from such a judgment there is no appeal to a coramon
peaceful umpire ; that in the theories of some schools they

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 4QJ[
may call out their young raen and their old raen under the
pains of death to defy the sword point of the federal arra ;
that they can pour around even the gallows and the tomb of
him who died for treason to the Union, honor, opinion, tears,
and thus sustain the last untimely hour, and soothe the disem
bodied, complaining shade ; that every one, by narae, by line
of boundary, by jurisdiction, is distinct frora every other, and
every one frora the nation ; that within their inviolate borders
lie our farras, our horaes, our raeeting-houses, our graves ;
that their laws, their courts, their railitia, their police, to so
vast an extent protect our persons frora violence, and our
houses from plunder ; that their heaven ripens our harvests ;
their schools form our children's raental and raoral nature ;
their charities or their taxes feed our poor ; their hospitals
cure or shelter our insane ; that their iraage, their opinions,
their literature, their morality are around us ever, a presence,
a monument, an atmosphere — when you consider this you feel
how practical and how inevitable is that antagonism to a single
national life, and how true it is that we " buy all our blessings
at a price."
But there is another antagonism to such a national life, less
constant, less legitiraate, less compensated, raore terrible, to
which I must refer, — not for reprobation, not for warning,
not even for grief, but that we raay know by contrast, nation
ality itself, — and that is, the eleraent of sections. This, too,
is old ; older than the States, old as the Colonies, old as the
churches that planted them, old as Jamestown, old as Plyra
outh. A thousand forms disguise and express it, and in all
of them it is hideous. Candidum seu nigrum hoc tu RomaM
caveto. Black or white, as you are Americans, dread it, shun
it ! Springing from many causes and fed by raany stiraula-
tions ; springing from that diversity of cliraate, business, insti
tutions, accomphsh raent, and morality, which coraes of our
greatness, and compels and should constitute our order and
our agreement^ but which only makes their difficulty and their
merit ; frora that self-love and self-preference which are their
own standard, exclusive, intolerant, and censorious of what is
wise and holy ; from the fear of ignorance, the jealousy of
ignorance, the narrowness of ignorance; from incapacity to
abstract, corabine, and grasp a complex and various object, and
VOL. II. 36

4)22 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
thus rise to the dignity of concession and forbearance and
coraproraise ; frora the frarae of our civil polity, the necessities
of our public life and the nature of our arabition, which forces
all raen not great men, — the minister in his parish, the poli
tician on the stump on election day, the editor of the party
newspaper, — to take his rise or his patronage from an intense
local opinion, and therefore to do his best to create or reinforce
it; frora our federative government; from our good traits,
bad traits, and foolish traits ; from that vain and vulgar hank
ering for European reputation and respect for European
opinion, which forgets that one raay know Aristophanes, and
Geography, and the Cosmical Unity and Telluric influences,
and the sraaller raorals of life, and all the sounding pretensions
of philanthropy, and yet not know Araerica; from that phi-
' losophy, falsely so called, which boasts emptily of progress,
renounces traditions, denies God and worships itself; from an
arrogant and flashy literature which mistakes a new phrase for
a new thought, and old nonsense for new truth, and is glad to
exchange for the farae of drawing-rooras and parlor windows,
and the side-lights of a car in motion, the approval of tirae and
the world; frora philanthropy which is short-sighted, irapa
tient and spasmodic, and cannot be made to appreciate that
its grandest and surest agent, in flis eye whose lifetirae is
Eternity, and whose periods are ages, is a nation and a sober
public opinion, and a safe and silent advanceraent, reforming
by time ; from that spirit which would rule or ruin, and would
reign in hell rather than serve in heaven ; springing from these
causes and stimulated thus, there is an eleraent of regions
antagonistic to nationality. Always I have said, there was
one ; always there wUl be. It lifted its shriek soraetiraes even
above the silver clarion tone that called raillions to unite for
independence. It resisted the nomination of Washington to
comraand our arraies ; made his new levies hate one another ;
assisted the caballings of Gates and Conway; mocked his
retreats, and threw its damp passing cloud for a moraent over
his exceeding glory ; opposed the adoption of any constitution ;
and perverted by construction and denounced as a covenant
with hell the actual Constitution when it was adopted; brought
into our vocabulary and discussions the hateful and ill-omened
words North and South, Atlantic and Western, which the

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 4,23
grave warnings of the Farewell Address expose and rebuke ;
transforraed the floor of congress into a battle field of contend
ing local policy ; convened its conventions at Abbeville and
flartford; rent asunder conferences and synods; turned stated
asserablies of grave clergyraen and grave laymen into shows
of gladiators or of the beasts of gladiators ; checked the holy
effort of missions, and set back the shadow on the dial-plate
of a certain araelioration and ultiraate probable eraancipation,
many degrees. Sorae raight say it culminated later in an
enterprise even more daring still ; but others might deny it.
The ashes upon that fire are not yet cold, and we will not
tread upon them. But all will unite in prayer to Alraighty
God that we raay never see, nor our children, nor their chil
dren to the thousandth generation may ever see it culminate in
a Geographical party, banded to elect a Geographical President,
and inaugurate a Geographical poUcy.
" Take any shape but that, and thcju art welcome ! "
But now, by the side of this and all antagonisms, higher
than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine
sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of Araerica! See
there the pillar of fire which God has kindled and lifted and
moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, worship
that, worship the highest in that. Between that light and our
eyes a cloud for a tirae may seem to gather ; chariots, arraed
men on foot, the troops of kings may raarch on us, and our
fears raay make us for a moraent turn from it ; a sea may^
spread before us, and waves seera to hedge us up ; dark idol
atries raay alienate sorae hearts for a season frora that wor
ship ; revolt, rebellion, raay break out in the carap, and the
waters of our springs raay run bitter to the taste and raock it ;
between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be
rolling ; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward,
ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either
hand in heaps ; that idolatry shall repent'; that rebeUion shall
be crushed ; that stream shall be sweetened ; that overflowing
river shall be passed on foot dry shod, in harvest tirae ; and
frora that proraised land of flocks, fields, tents, raountains,
coasts and ships, frora North and South, and East and West,
there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanks
giving !

424 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
But we were seeking the nature of the spirit of nationality,
and we pass in this inquiry from contrast to analysis. You
may call it, subjectively regarded, a mode of contemplating
the nation in its essence, and so far it is an intellectual con
ception, and you may call it a feeling, towards the nation thus
conteraplated, and so far it is an eraotion. In the intellectual
exercise it conteraplates the nation as it is one, and as it is dis
tinguished from all other nations, and in the emotional exer
cise it loves it, and is proud of it as thus it is contemplated.
This you may call its ultimate analysis. But how much raore
is included in it ! flow rauch flows from it ! flow cold and
inadequate is such a description, if we leave it there ! Think
of it first as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as
a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting-
on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your
heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of mil
lions around you. Instantly, under such an influence, you
ascend above the smoke and stir of this sraall local strife ; you
tread upon the high places of the earth and of history ; you
think and feel as an Araerican for Araerica ; her power, her
eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours ; your cora
petitors, like hers, are kings ; your horae, like hers, is the world;
your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires ; our charge,
her charge, is of generations and ages ; your record, her record,
is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations ; her
image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western
star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no
lowering cloud, no angry river, no fingering spring, no broken
crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand,
arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened
into one beara of kindred rays, the iraage, harbinger, and
proraise of love, hope, and a brighter day !
Think of it next, as an active virtue. Is not all history a
recital of the achieveraents of nationality, and an exponent of
its historical and iraperial nature ? Even under systeras far
less perfect, and influences far less auspicious than ours, has it
not lifted itself up for a time above all things meaner, vindica^^
ting itself by action, by the subliraity of a brave daring, suc
cessful or unsuccessful, by the subliraity of a working hope ?
flow loose, for exaraple, and how perfidious, was that union of

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 4,25
the States of Greece in all tiraes ! flow distinct were the na
tions of Attica, of Laconia, of Thessaly, of Boeotia, and how
utterly insufficient the oracle, the Araphyctionic Asserably, the
garaes, the great first epic, to restrain Athens and Sparta and
Thebes from contending, by diplomacy, by fraud, by battle, for
the raastery ! And yet even in the historical age, when the
storra of Eastern invasion swept that blue sea, and those laugh
ing islands, and iron-bound coast, over, above, grander and
more useful than the fear and policy which counselled tempo
rary union, — were there not some, were there not many, on
whose perturbed and towering motives carae the thought of
that great, comraon, Greek narae ; that race, kindred at last,
though policy, though mines of marble, though ages had parted
thera, — that golden, ancient, polished speech, that inherited
ancestral glory, that national Olyrapus, that inviolated, sterile
and separate earth, that farae of camps, that fire of camps which
put out the ancient life of the Troy of Asia ; and was it not
such meraories as these that burn and revel in the pages of
flerodotus ? Did not Sparta and Athens hate one another and
fight one another habitually, and yet when those Lacedseraonian
levies gazed so steadfastly on the faces of the fallen at Mara
thon, did they not give Greek tears to Athens and Greek
curses to Persia, and in the hour of Platsea did they not stand
together against the barbarian ?
What else forraed the secret of the brief spell of Rienzi's
power, and burned and sparkled in the poetry and rhetoric of
his friend Petrarch, and soothed the dark hour of the grander
soul of Machiavel, loathing that Italy, and recalling that other
day when " eight hundred thousand raen sprang to arras at the
rumor of a Gallic invasion ? "
Is not Prussia afraid of Austria, and Saxony of Bavaria, and
Frankfort jealous of Dresden, and so through the twenty-seven
or eight or thirty States, great and sraall ; and yet the dear,
common fatherland, the old German tongue, the legend of fler-
raann, the native and titular Rhine flowing rapid, deep, and
raajestic, like the life of a hero of antiquity — do not these
spectacles and 'these traditions soraetiraes wake the nationality
of Gerraany to action, as well as to life and hope ?
But if you would conteraplate nationality as an active virtue,
look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one
36*

426 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
record of what it can do ? This day and all which it stands
for, — did it not give us these ? This glory of the fields of
that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this wide one sheet
of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that
escaped frora it away, forever and forever ; the courage to fight,
to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the
young arra and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold
on tUl the magnificent consummation crowned the work — were
not all these imparted as inspired by this imperial sentiraent ?
Has it not here begun the master-work of raan, the creation of
a national life ? Did it not call out that prodigious develop
ment of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which illus
trated the years after the war, and the fraraing and adopting
of the Constitution ? flas it not, in the general, contributed
to the adrainistering of that government wisely and well since ?
Look at it ! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has
involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neu
trality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been
our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the
nations, for which they are created and for which they raust
one day, before sorae tribunal give account, what a raeasure of
these it has enabled us already to fulfil ! It has lifted us to the
throne and has set on our brow the narae of the great Repub
lic. It has taught us to deraand nothing wrong, and to sub
rait to nothing wrong ; it has raade our diplomacy sagacious,
wary, and accoraplished ; it has opened the iron gate of the
raountain, and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea ;
it has raade the desert to bud and blossora as the rose ; it has
quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts ; it has whiten
ed lake and ocean with tlie sails of a daring, new and lawful
trade ; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum
of our better liberty ; it has kept us at rest within all our bor
ders ; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local
insubordination ; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under
law and under order, broadcast ; it has seen and helped Araer
ican feeling to swell into a fuller flood ; frora many a field and
many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and
fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag all unstained; it
has opened our age of lettered glory ; it has opened and hon
ored the age of the industry of the people !

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 427
We have done with the nature of Araerican nationa,Uty,
with its contrasts, analysis and fruits. I have less pleas
ure to remind you that it has conditions also, and ethics,
And what are some of these ? This is our next considera
tion. And the first of these is that this national existence is, to an
extraordinary degree, not a growth, but a production ; that it
has origin in the wUl and the reason, and that the will and the
reason raust keep it alive, or it can bear no life. I do not for-»
get that a power above man's power, a wisdora above man's
wisdom, a reason above man's reason, may be traced without
the presuraptuousness of fanaticisra in the fortunes of Araerica.
I do not forget that God has been in our history. Beyond that
dazzling progress of art, society, thought, which is of flis or
daining, although it may seem to a false philosophy a fatal
and inevitable flow under law — beyond this I do not forget
that there have been, and there may be again interpositions,
providential, exceptional, and direct, of that Supreme Agency
without which no sparrow falleth. That condition of mind
and of opinion in Europe, and raore than anywhere else, in
England, which raarked the period of eraigration, and bore
flower, fruit and seed after its kind in the new world ; that
conflict and upheaval and ferraenting in the age of Charles the
First, and the Long Parliaraent, and Crorawell, and Milton —
violated nature asserting herself; that disappearance ofthe old
races here, wasting so mysteriously and so seasonably — that
drear death giving place as in nature to a better life ; that long
colonial growth in shade and storm and neglect, sheltered im
perfectly by our relations to the mother country, and not yet
exposed to the tempest and lightning of the high places of po
litical independence ; burdened and poor, but yet evolving,
germinant, prophetic ; that insane coraraon attack of one ty
ranny on so raany charters; that succession of incompetent
English comraanders and English tactics against us iu the war;
that one soul breathed in a raoraent into a continent ; the Dec
laration so tiraely, and so full of tone ; the name, the services,
the influence of Washington -r- these are " parts of His ways,"
and we may understand and adore them.
I do not forget either that in the great first step we had to
take — that difficulty so stupendous, of beginning to raould the

428 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
colonies into a nation, to overcorae the prejudices of habit and
ignorance, the petty cavils of the petty, the envy, the jealousy,
the arabition, the fears of great raen and little raen ; to take
away partition walls, roll away provincial flags and hush pro
vincial druras, and give to the young Republic E Pluribus
Unum, to set out onward and upward on her Zodiac path, — I
do not forget that in this, too, there were helps of circurastan
ces for which no philosophy and no pride can make us un
thankful. Take one. flave you ever considered, speculating on the
mysteries of our national being, how providentially the colonial
life itself, in one respect, quaUfied for Union, and how provi-
dentiaUy it carae to pass that independence and nationality were
born in one day? Suppose that frora the tiraes when they
were planted respectively, these colonies had been independent
of one another, and of every one — suppose this had been so
for one hundred and fifty years, for one hundred and seventy
years ; that in the eye of public law they had through all that
tirae ranked with England, with France ; that through all that
tirae they had made war, concluded peace, negotiated treaties
of commerce and of alliance, received and sent ministers, coined
money, superintended trade, " done all other things which in
dependent States of right may do ; " and then that a single
foreign power had sought to reduce them. I do not say that
that power would have reduced thera. I do not say that ne
cessity, that prudence, which is civil necessity, would not have
taught them to assist one another, and that in one sense, and
that a just one, they would have fought and triumphed togeth
er. But when that victory was won and the cloud rolled off
seaward, would these victors have flown quite so easily into
a coraraon erabrace and becorae a single people ? This long
antecedent several independence ; this long antecedent national
life — would it not have indurated thera and separated thera ?
These old high actions and high passions flowing diverse ;
these opposed banners of old fields ; this rausic of hostile march
es; these raeraories of an unshared past ; this history of a glory
in which one only had part, — do you think they could have
been melted, softened, and beaten quite so easUy into the unity
of a common life ? Might not the world have seen here, in
stead, another Attica, and Achaia and Lacedsemonia, and Mes-

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 420
sina, and Naples and Florence and Saxony ? Did not that
colonial life, in its nature — that long winter and lingering
spring — discipline and prepare raen for the future of their civU
life, as au April snow enriches the earth it seeras to bury ? Did
it not keep back the growths which raight otherwise have shot
up into irapracticable ranknesses and diversities ? Did it not
divert raen frora theraselves to one another -^ frora Massachu
setts and Virginia and New York, to the forming or the pos
sible America ? Instead of stunting aud enfeebling, did it not
enlarge and strengthen ? And when all that host flocked to
gether, to taste together the first waters of independent life, and
one high, common, proud feeling pervaded their ranks, lifted
up all hearts, softened aU hearts at once — and a Rhode Island
General was seen to fight at the Eutaws ; and a New Yorker,
or one well beloved of Massachusetts, at Saratoga ; and a Vir
ginian to guide the common war, and a united army to win the
victory for all — was not the transition, in a moraent so sublirae,
more natural, less violent, more easy to the transcendent con
ception of nationality itself?
I do not deny, too, that sorae things subordinate and execu
tory are a little easier than at first ; that the friction of the
machine is less soraewhat ; that raere adrainistration has grown ,
simpler ; that organizations have been effected which may
move of theraselves ; that departraents have been created and
set going, which can go alone ; that the Constitution has been
construed authoritatively ; that a course, a routine has been
established in which things' — sorae things — may go on as
now, without your thought or raind. Bold he is, raoreover, I
adrait, not wise, who would undertake to deterraine what
chance, or what Providence raay do, and what man raay do in
the sustentation of national life. But remember, that is a false
philosophy and that is no religion which absolves frora duty.
That is irapiety which boasts of a will of God, and forgets the
business of man. Will and reason created, will and reason
must keep. Every day, still, we are in coraraittee of the whole
on the question of the Constitution or no Constitution. Eter
nal vigilance is the condition of union, as they say it is of lib
erty. I have heard that if the sarae Oranipotence which
forraed the universe at first should suspend its care for a day,
priraeval chaos were corae again. Dare we risk such a spec-

430 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
ulation in politics and act on it ? Consider how new is this
Araerica of yours ! Sorae there are yet alive who saw this in
fant rocked in the cradle. Sorae there are yet alive who be
held the first inauguration of Washington ; many that felt how
the tidings of his death smote on the general heart. Sorae
now alive saw the deep broad trench first excavated, the stone
drawn frora the raountain-side, the mortar mingled, the Cyclo
pean foundation laid, the tears, the anthems, the thanksgiving
of the dedication day. That unknown, therefore magnified,
therefore magnificent original ; that august tradition of a
mixed human and Divine ; that hidden fountain ; the long, half-
hidden flow glancing uncertain and infrequent through the
opening of the old forest, spreading out, at last, after leagues,
after centuries, into the clear daylight of history ; the authori
tative prescription ; the legend, the fable, the tones of uncertain
harps, the acquiescence of generations, rising in a long line to
life as to a gift, — where for us are they ? On all this architec
ture of utility and reason, where has Tirae laid a finger ? What
angularity has it rounded; what stone has it covered with moss;
on what salient or what pendant coigne of vantage has it built
its nest ; on what deformity has its raoonlight and twilight
fallen ? What enables us then to withhold for a moraent the
sustaining hand ? The counsel of phUosophy and history, of
Cicero, of Machiavel, of Montesquieu, to turn to the first prin
ciples, to reproduce and reconstruct the ancient freedora, the
mascuHne virtues, the plain wisdom of the original — is it not
seasonable counsel erainently for you ? Reraeraber, your reason,
your wiU, raay keep, must keep what reason and will builded.
Yours is the responsibility, yours, to country, to man, un
shared, unconcealed.
I do not know that I need to say next that such a spirit of
nationality reposing on will and reeison, or, however produced,
not spontaneous, and therefore to some extent artificial, de
mands a specific culture to develop it and to make it intense,
sure and constant. I need not say this, because it is so plain ;
but it is iraportant as well as plain. There is a love of country
which coraes uncaUed for, one knows not how. It coraes in
with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instincts, the first taste
of the mothei^'s milk, the first beatings of the heart. The faces
of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, — the

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 431
laugh of playraates, the old wiUow-tree, and well, and school-
house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at
evening, the lullaby, the cows coraing horae, the singing-book,
the catechisra, the visits of neighbors, the general training, —
all things which make childhood happy, begin it ; and then as
the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on, and
love and the sense of home and security and of property under
law, come to life; — and as the story goes round, and as the
book or the newspaper relates the less favored lots of other
lands, and the public and the private sense of a man is forming
and forraed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they
had irabibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they
who hung deadly on the retreat, aud they who threw up the
hasty and iraperfect redoubt on Bunker flill by night, set on
it the blood-red provincial flag, and passed so calraly with
Prescott and Putnam aud Warren through the experiences of
the first fire.
But now to direct this spontaneous sentiment of hearts to
the Union, to raise it high, to raake it broad and deep, to in
struct it, to educate it, is in sorae things harder, sorae things
easier ; but it may be done ; it must be done. She, too, has
her spectacles ; she, too, has her great names ; she, too, has
her food for patriotism, for chUdhood, for man. "Araericans,"
said an orator of France, " begin with the infant in the cradle.
Let the first word he lisps be Washington." flang on his
neck on that birth-day, and that day of his death at Mount
Vernon, the Medal of Congress, by its dark ribbon ; tell hira
the story of the flag, as it passes glittering along the road ; bid
hira listen to that plain, old-fashioned, stirring rausic of the
Union ; lead hira when school is out at evening to the grave
of his great-grandfather, the old soldier of the war ; bid hira,
like flannibal, at nine years old, lay the little hand on that
Constitution and swear reverently to observe it ; lift him up
and lift yourselves up to the height of American feeling ; open
to him, and think for yourselves, on the relation of America to
the States ; show him upon the raap the area to which she has
extended herself; the cUraates that corae into the nuraber of
her raonths ; the silver paths of her trade, wide as the world ;
tell hira of her contributions to huraanity, and her protests for
free governraent ; keep with hira the glad and soleran feasts

432 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
of her appointment ; bury her great names in his heart, and
into your hearts ; conteraplate habitually, lovingly, intelli
gently, this grand abstraction, this vast reality of good ; and
such an institution raay do somewhat to transform this surpass
ing beauty into a national life, which shall last while sun and
moon endure.
But there is another condition of our nationality of which I
must say something, and that is that it rests on coraproraise.
America, the Constitution, practicable policy, all of it, are a
corapromise. Our public is possible — it can draw its breath
for a day • — - only by comproraise.
There is a cant of shallowness and fanaticism which misun
derstands and denies this. There is a distempered and ara
bltious raorality which says civil prudence is no virtue. There
is a philanthropy, — so it calls itself, — pedantry, arrogance,
folly, cruelty, irapiousness, I call it, fit enough for a pulpit,
totally unfit for a people ; fit enough for a preacher, totally
unfit for a statesraan ; - — which, confounding large things with
little things, ends with raeans, subordinate ends with chief
ends, one raan's sphere of responsibUity with another man's
sphere of responsibility, seed-tirae with harvest, one science
with another science, one truth with another truth, one juris
diction with another jurisdiction, the span-long day of life with
the duration of States, generals with universals, the principle
with the practice, the Anglo-Celtic-Saxon of Araerica with the
pavers of Paris, cutting down the half-grown tree to snatch
the unripe fruit — there is a phUanthropy which scolds at this
even, and calls it naraes.
To such a spirit I have nothing to say, but I have sorae
thing to say to you. It is reraarked by a very leading writer
of our tiraes, Lord Macaulay — ¦ ennobled less by title than by
genius and farae, — " that compromise is the essence of pol
itics." Tbat which every raan of sense adraits to be so true,
as to have becorae a coraraon-place of all politics, is peculiarly
true of our national politics. Our history is a record of cora
proraises ; and this freedora and this glory attest their wisdom
and bear their fruits. But can these comproraises stand the
higher test of raorality? Concessions for the sake of the
nation ; concessions for what the general opinion of America
has pronounced concessions for Araerica ; concessions in raeas-

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 433
ures ; concessions in spirit for such an end ; — are they a
virtue ?
I hope it is worth soraething, in the first place, that the
judgment of civilization, coUected frora all its expression and
all its exponents, has ranked concession for the keeping and
well-being of the nation, araong the whiter virtues. Starting
with the grand central sentiraent that patriotism is the noblest
practical liraitation of universal philanthropy, and reserving its
enthusiasm, its tears, for the martyred patriot, and deeming
his death the raost glorious of deaths, it has given ever the
first place to him whose firmness, wisdom, and moderation have
built the State, and whose firraness, wisdom, and raoderation
keep the State. These traits it has staraped as virtues. These
traits it has stamped as great virtues. Poetry, art, history,
biography, the funeral discourse, the utterance of that judg
ment, how universally have they so stamped them ! He whose
harp, they said, attracted and fused savage natures ; he who
gave to his people, not the best government, but the best that
they would bear ; he who by timely adaptations elevated an
inferior class to equality with a superior class, and made two
nations into one; he whose tolerance and comprehension put
out the fires of persecution, and placed all opinions and relig
ions on one plane before the law ; he whose healing counsels
composed the distractions of a various empire, — he is the
great good man of civilization. Ambition raight have been
his aira to sorae extent, but the result is a country, a power, a
law. On that single title, it raised his statue, hung on it the
garland that cannot die, kept his birthday by the firing of
cannons, and ringing of bells, and processions, and thanks to
God Almighty. He may not have been fortunate in war ; he
raay not have been foremost araong raen of genius ; but what
Luxembourg, what Eugene, what Marlborough heaped on his
ashes such a monument, as the wise, just, cold, Dutch deUverer
of England ? What Gates, what Lee, what Alexander, what
Napoleon, won such honor, such love, such sacred and warm-
felt approval as our civU father, Washington? Does that
judgment, the judgment of civilization, conderan Deraosthenes,
who would have invited Persia to help against Macedon ; or
Cicero, who praised and soothed the young Octavius, to win
hira from Anthony ; or the Calvinist WiUiara, who invited the
VOL. II. 37

434 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
papal Austria to fight with him against Louis XIV. ? Does
it dream of branding such an act as hypocrisy, or apostacy?
Does it not recognize it rather as wisdora, patriotisra, and
virtue, raasculine and intelligent ? Does it not rather give
hira all honor and thanks, who could forego the sweets of
revenge, rise above the cowardice of selfishness and the narrow
meraory of personal inapplicable antecedents, and for the love
of Athens, of Rome, of England, of liberty, could magnani
mously grasp the solid glory of great souls ?
But this judgment of civUization, I maintain next, is a
sound moral judgraent. It is founded on a theory of duty
which raakes the highest utility to raan the grandest achieve
raent of raan. It thinks that it discerns that the national life
is the true useful huraan life. It thinks that it discerns that
the greater includes the less ; that beneath that order, that
governraent, that law, that power, reforra is easy and reform
is safe — reforra of the man, reforra of the nation. It ven
tures to hold that a nation is the grandest of the instruraen
talities of morals and religion. It holds that under that wing,
beneath that Ughtning, there is room, there is capacity, for
humbly imitating His plan who sits in the circle of eteriyty,
and with whom a thousand years are as one day ; room,
raotive, capacity for labor, for culture, for preparation, for the
preaching of the gospel of peace to all, for elevating by slow,
sure, and quiet gradations down to its depths, down to its
chains, society itself. Concession to keep such an agent is
concession to promote such ends.
Do you reraeraber what a great moraUst and a great raan.
Archbishop Whately, said on this subject in the House of
Lords ? He was advocating concession to Catholics ; and see
how rauch stronger was truth than the hatred of theologians.
The biographer of Peel calls the speech a splendid piece of
reasoning ; and it decided the vote : —
" So great is the outcry which it has been the fashion
araong sorae persons for several years past to raise against
expediency, that the very word has becorae alraost an ill-
omened sound. It seems to be thought by raany a sufficient
ground of conderanation of any legislator to say that he is
guided by views of expediency. And sorae seera even to be
ashamed of acknowledging that they are, in any degree, so

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 435
guided. I, for one, however, ara content to subrait to the
imputation of being a votary of expediency. And what is
more, I do not see what right any one who is not so has to sit
in Parliaraent, or to take any part in public affairs. Any one
who raay choose to acknowledge that the raeasures he opposes
are expedient, or that those he recoraraends are inexpedient,
ought raanifestly to have no seat in a deliberative asserably,
which is constituted for the express and sole purpose of con
sidering what raeasures are conducive to the public good ; —
iu other words, 'expedient.' I say, the ^public good,' because,
of course, by ' expediency ' we raean, not that which may ben
efit some individual, or sorae party or class of raen, at the
expense of the public, but what conduces to the good of the
nation. Now this, it is evident, is the very object for which
deliberative asserablies are constituted. And so far is this
frora being regarded, by our Church at least, as soraething at
variance with religious duty, that we have a prayer specially
appointed to be offered up during the sitting of the Houses of
Parliament, that their consultations raay be ' directed and pros
pered for the safety, honor, and ivelfare of our sovereign and
her dorainions.' Now, if this be not the very definition of
political expediency, let any one say what is."
I have no doubt, however, that this judgraent of civilization
rests in part on the difficulty and the rarity of the virtue which
it praises. We prize the difficult and the rare because they
are difficult and rare ; and when you consider how easy and
how terapting it is to fall in with and float with the streara on
which so raany swim ; how easy is that broad road and how
sweet that approved strain ; how easy and how tempting it is
to please, an assenting congregation, or circle of readers, or local
public ; how easy and how tempting to compound for sins
which an influential raan " is not inclined to, by daraning those
he has no raind to ;" how easy to please those we see, and for
get those out of sight ; what courage, what love of truth are
demanded to dissent ; how hard it is to rise to the vast and
varied conception, andto the one idea, which grasps and adjusts
all the ideas ; how easy it is for the little raan to becorae
great, the shallow raan to becorae profound ; the coward out
of danger to be brave ; the free-state man to be an anti-slavery
man, and to write tracts which his friends alone read ; when

436 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
you think that even the laughter of fools and chUdren and
madmen, little ministers, little editors, and little politicians, can
inflict the mosquito bite, not deep, but stinging ; — who won
ders that the serener and the calmer judgment allots " to pa
tient continuance in well doing," to resistance of the parts, to
contention for the whole, to counsels of moderation and conces
sion, " glory, honor, and imraortality?"
W^hat nothing earthly gives or ean destroy.
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy.
But this judgraent of civUization is the judgraent of religion
too. You believe with the Bible, with Cicero, with the teach
ings of history, that God wills the national life. He wills civ
ilization, therefore society, therefore law, therefore government,
therefore nations. How do we know this ? Always, from the
birth of the historical time, civilized raan led the national life.
Therein always the nature God has given him has sweUed to
aU its perfection, and has rendered the worthiest praise to the
Giver of the gift. He who wills the end wills the indispensa
ble raeans ; he wills the raeans which his teachers, nature and
experience, have ascertained to be indispensable. Then he
wills these means, concession, compromise, love, forbearance,
help, because his teachers, nature and experience, have revealed
thera to be indispensable. Then he wills our national life.
Then he wiUs the spirit which raade it and which keeps it.
Do you dare to say, with President Davies, that you beUeve
that Providence raised up that young man, Washington, for
sorae great public service, — with the spectator of that first
inauguration, that you believe the Supreme Being looked
down with complacency on that act, — with that Senate which
thanked God that he had conducted to the torab a farae whiter
than it was brilliant ; and yet dare to say that the spirit of
Washington ought not to be your spirit, his counsels your
guide, his Farewell Address your scripture of political religion ?
But what does he say ? I need not repeat it, for you have it
by heart ; but what said a greater than he ? " Render unto
Csesar the things which are Caesar's." Render under Csesar
the things that are Csesar's, and thus, to that extent, you " ren
der unto God the things which are God's." Be these words
our answer and our defeuce. When they press us with the

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 437
common-places of anti-slavery, be these words of wisdora our
answer. Say to them, "Yes, I thank God I keep no slaves.
I ara sorry there is one on earth ; I ara sorry even that there is
need of law, of subordination, of order, of governraent, of the
discipline of the schools, of prisons, of the gallows ; I wonder
at such a systera of things ; piously I would reforra it ; but
beneath that sarae system I ara an Araerican citizen ; (leneath
that system, this country it is my post to keep ; while I keep
her there is hope for all raen, for the evU man, for the intem
perate raan, for slaves, for free, for all ; that hope your rash
and hasty hand would prostrate ; that hope my patience would
advance." flave they done ? Are they answered ?
There are other conditions and other laws of our nationality
on which there needs to be said something if there were tirae.
That it is not and that it cannot come to good, that it cannot
achieve its destiny, that it cannot live even, unless it rests on
the understanding of the State, you know. How gloriously
this is anticipated by our own Constitution, you remember.
How well said Washington — who said all things as he did
all things, well — " that in proportion as governments rest on
public opinion, that opinion must be enlightened." There must
then be intelligence at the foundation. But what intelligence ?
Not that which puff'eth up, I fancy, not flippancy, not smart
ness, not sciolism, whose fruits, whose expression are vanity,
restlessness, insubordination, hate, irreverence, unbelief, inca
pacity to corabine ideas, and great capacity to overwork a
single one. Not quite this. This is that little intelligence
and little learning which are dangerous. These are the char
acteristics, I have read, which pave the way for the downfall
of States ; not those on which a long glory and a long strength
have towered. These, raore than the general of Macedon,
gave the poison to Deraosthenes in the Island Teraple. These,
not the triumvirate alone, closed the eloquent lips of Cicero.
These, before the populous North had done it, spread beneath
Gibraltar to the Lybian sands in the downward age. These,
not Christianity, not Goth, not Lombard, nor Norman, rent
that fair one Italy asunder, and turned the garden and the mis
tress of the earth into a school, into a hiding place, of assassins
— of spies from Austria, of spies from France, with gold to
buy and ears to catch and punish the drearas of liberty whis-
37*

438 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
pered in sleep, and shamed the meraories and hopes of Mach
iavel and Mazzini, and gave for that joy and that beauty,
mourning and heaviness. This is not the inteUigence our
Constitution means, Washington meant, and our country needs.
It is intelligence which, however it begins, ends with belief,
with humility, with obedience, with veneration, with adraira
tion, with truth; which recognizes and then learns and then
teaches the duties of a coraprehensive citizenship ; which hopes
for a future on earth and beyond earth, but turns habituaUy,
reverently, thoughtfully to the old paths, the great raen, the
hallowed graves of the fathers ; which binds in one bundle of
love the kindred and raighty legend of revolution and liberty,
the life of Christ in the Evangelists, and the Constitution in its
plain text ; which can read with Lord Chathara, Thucydides
and the stories of raaster States of antiquity, yet holds with
hira that the papers of the Congress of 177^ were better ;
whose patriotisra grows warra at Marathon, but warraer at
Monraouth, at Yorktowui, at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga ; which
reforms by preserving, serves by standing and waiting, fears
God and honors Araerica.
I had soraething to say raore directly still on the ethics of
nationality, on tbe duty of instructing the conscience ; on the
crimes of treason, and slander, and fraud, that are coraraitted
around us in its name ; on the shallowness and stupidity of the
doctrine that tbe mere moral sentiraents, trained by a raere
moral discipline, may safely guide the coraplex civil life ; of
the teachers aud studies which they need to fit thera for so
precious, difficult, and delicate a dorainion ; of the high place
in the scale of duties, which, thus fitted, they assign to nation
ality; of the judgment which, thus fitted they would apply to
one or two of the comraon-places' and practices of the tirae.
But I pass it all to say only that these ethics teach the true
subordination, and the true reconciliation of apparently incom
patible duties. These only are the casuists, or the safest cas
uists for us. Learn from them how to adjust this conflict be
tween patriotism and philanthropy. To us, indeed, there seeins
to be no such conflict, for we are philanthropists in proportion
as we are unionists. Our philanthropy, we venture to say, is
a just philanthropy. That is aU. It loves aU men, it helps
all men, it respects all rights, keeps all compacts, recognizes

ADDRESS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. 439
all dangers, pities aU suffering, ignores no fact, master and
slave it enfolds alike. It happens thus that it contracts the
sphere of our duty somewhat, and changes not the nature,
but the time, the place, the mode of performing it. It does
not make our love cold, but it makes it safe ; it naturalizes it,
it baptizes it into our life ; it circumscribes it within our ca
pacities and our necessities ; it sets on it the great national
public seal. If you say that thus our patriotism limits our
phUanthropy, I answer that ours is American philanthropy.
Be this the virtue we boast, and this the name by which we
know it. In this uarae, in this quality, find the standard and
the utterance of the virtue itself. By this, not by broad phy
lacteries and chief seats, the keener hate, the gloomier fanati
cisra, the louder cry, judge, compare, subordinate. Do they
think that nobody is a philanthropist but themselves ? We,
too, look up the long vista and gaze, rapt, at the dazzling as
cent ; we, too, see towers rising, crowned, imperial, and the
tribes coming to bend in the opening of a latter day. But we
see peace, order, reconciliation of rights along that brightening
future. We trace all along that succession of reform, the pre
siding instrumentalities of national life. We see our morality
working itself clearer and clearer ; one historical and conven
tional right or wrong, after another, falling peacefully and still ;
we hear the chain breaking, but there is no blood on it, none
of his whom it bound, none of his who put it on him ; we hear
the sweUing chorus of the free, but master and slave unite in
that chorus, and there is no discordant shriek above the har
mony ; we see and we hail the blending of our own glory with
the eternal light of God, but we see, too, shapes of love and
beauty ascending and descending there as in the old vision !
Hold fast this hope ; distrust the phUanthropy, distrust the
ethics which would, which raust, turn it into sharae. Do no
evil that good may come. Perform your share, for you have a
share, in the abolition of slavery ; perforra your share, for you
have a share, in the noble and generous strife of the sections —
but perforra it by keeping, by transmitting, a united, loving
AND Christian America.
But why, at last, do I exhort, and why do I seem to fear,
on such a day as this ? Is it not the nation's birthday ? Is it
not this country of our love and hopes, which celebrates it ?

440 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
This music of the glad march, these banners of pride and
beauty, these memories so fragrant, these resolutions of pat
riotism so thoughtful, these hands pressed, these congratula
tions and huzzaings and tears, this great heart throbbing audi
bly, — • are they not hers, and do they not assure us ? These
forests of masts, these singing workshops of labor, these fields
and plantations whitening for the harvest, this peace and plenty,
this sleeping thunder, these bolts in the closed, strong talon, do
not they tell us of her health, her strength, and her future ?
This shadow that flits across our grasses and is gone, this
shallow ripple that darkens the surface of our broad and
widening stream, and passes away, this little perturbation
which our telescopes cannot find, and which our science can
hardly find, but which we know cannot change the course or
hasten the doora of one star ; have these any terror for us ?
And He who slurabers not, nor sleeps, who keeps watchfully
the city of his love, on whose will the life of nations is sus
pended, and to whom all the shields of the earth belong, our
fathers' God, is he not our God, and of whora, then, andof
what shall we be afraid ?

SPEECH ON THE BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL
WEBSTER, JANUARY 21, 1859.

[The seventy-seventh anniversary of the birthday of Daniel Webster
was commemorated by a banquet at the Revere House. At the conclu
sion of the feast, and after the opening address by the president of tbe
day, Hon. Caleb Cushing, Mr. Choate, being called upon, spoke as fol
lows :]
I WOULD not have it supposed for a raoraent that I design
to make any eulogy, or any speech, concerning the great man
whose birthday we have met to observe. I hasten to assure you
that I shall attempt to do no such thing. There is no longer
need of it, or fitness for it, for any purpose. Tiraes have
been when such a thing raight have been done with propriety.
While he was yet personally araong us, — while he was yet
walking in his strength in the paths or ascending the heights
of active public life, or standing upon thera, — and so many of
the good and wise, so many of the wisest and best of our
country, from all parts of it, thought he had title to the great
office of our systera, and would have had him forraally pre
sented for it, it was fit that those who loved and honored hira
should publicly, — with effort, with passion, with argument,
with contention, — recall the series of his services, his life of
elevated labors, finished and unfinished, display his large quali
ties of character and raind, and compare hira, somewhat, in all
these things, with the great men, his corapetitors for the great
prize. Then was there a battle to be fought, and it was need
ful to fight it.
And so, again, in a later day, while our hearts were yet
bleeding with the sense of recent loss, and he lay newly dead

442 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
in his chamber, and the bells were tolling, and his grave was
open, and the sunlight of an auturan day was faUing on that
long funeral train, I do not say it was fit only, it was unavoid
able, that we all, in some choked utterance and some imperfect,
sincere expression, should, if we could not praise the patriot,
lament the man.
But these times have gone by. The race of honor and duty
is for hira all run. The high endeavor is made, and it is fin
ished. The raonument is builded. fle is entered into his
glory. The day of hope, of pride, of grief, has been fol
lowed by the long rest; and the sentiraents of grief, pride,
and hope, are all raerged in the sentiraent of calm and im
plicit veneration. We have buried him in our hearts. That
is enough to say. Our estimation of him is part of our creed.
We have no argument to raake or hear upon it. We enter
into no dispute about him. We perrait no longer any raan to
question us as to what he was, what he had done, how rauch
we loved hira, how rauch the country loved hira, and how well
he deserved it. We adraire, we love, and we are still. Be
this enough for us to say.
Is it not enough that we just stand silent on the deck of the
bark fast flying frora the shore, and turn and see, as the line
of coast disappears, and the headlands and hills and all the land
go down, and the islands are swallowed up, the great moun
tain standing there in its strength and raajesty, suprerae and
still — to see how it swells away up frora the subject and fading
vale ? to see that, though clouds and terapests, and the noise of
waves, and the yelping of curs, may be at its feet, eternal sun
shine has settled upon its head ?
There is another reason why I should not trust myself to
say rauch raore of hira to-night. It does so happen that you
cannot praise Mr. Webster for that which really characterized
and identified him as a public man, but that you seera to be
coraposing a tract for the times.
It does so happen that the influence of his whole public life
and position was so pronounced — so to speak — so defined,
sharp, sahent ; the spirit of his mind, the tone of his mind, was
so unmistakable and so peculiar ; the nature of the public raan
was so transparent and so recognized everywhere, — that you
cannot speak of hira without seeraing to grow poleraical, with-

SPEECH AT THE WEBSTER DINNER. 443
out seeraing to raake an attack upon other raen, upou organ
izations, upon policy, upon tendencies. You cannot say of hira
what is true, and what you know to be true, but you are
thought to be disparaging or refuting soraebody else.
In this way there coraes to be raingled with our service of
the heart something of the discordant, incongruous, and terapo
rary. So it is everywhere. They could not keep the birthday
of Charles James Fox, but they were supposed to attack the
grave of Pitt, and aim at a Whig administration and a reforra
bill. An historian can hardly adraire the architecture of the
age of Pericles, or find sorae palliation of the trial of Socrates,
but they say he is a Democrat, a Chartist, or a friend of the
secret ballot. The raarvellous eloquence, and noble, patriotic
enterprise of our Everett, can scarcely escape such raiscon-
struction of sraall jealousy.
Yes ; sad it is, but true, that you cannot say here to-night
what yojLi think, what you know, what you thank God for,
about the Union-loving heart, the Constitution-defending brain,
the raoderation-breathing spirit, the American nature of the
great raan, — our friend, — but they call out you are thinking
of thera ! So powerful is the suggestion of contrast, and such
cowards does conscience raake of all bad raen !
I feel the effect of this erabarrassraent. I protest against
such an application of anything I say. But I feel, also, that
it will be better'than such a protest, to sura up in the briefest
and plainest aud soberest expression, what I deera will be the
record of history, — let me hope, with the iraraunities of his
tory, — concerning this raan, as a public raan.
He was, theu, let rae say, of the very foremost of great
American Statesmen. This is the class of greatness in which
he is to be ranked. As such, always, he is to be judged.
What he would have been in another department of thought ;
how high he would have risen under other institutions ; what
he could have done if politics had not turned hira frora calra
philosophy aside ; whether he were really raade for raankind,
and to Araerica gave up what was raeant for raankind ; how
his raere naked intellectual ability compared with this man's or
that, — is a needless and vain speculation.
I raay, however, be allowed to say that, although I have

444 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
seen him act, and heard him speak, and give counsel, in very
high and very sharp and difficult crises, I always felt that if
more had been needed raore would have been done, and that
half his strength or all his strength he put not forth. I never
saw him raake what is called an effort without feeling that, let
the occasion be what it would, he would have swelled out to
its limits. There was always a reservoir of power of which
you never sounded the depths, certainly never saw the bottom ;
and I cannot well imagine any great historical and civil occa
sion to which he would not have brought, and to which he
would not be acknowledged to have brought, an adequate abil
ity, fle had wisdom to have guided the counsels of Austria
as Metternich did, if he had loved absolutism as well ; skUl
enough and eloquence enough to have saved the life of Louis
the Sixteenth, if skUl and eloquence could have done it ; learn
ing, services, character, and dignity enough for a Lord Chan
ceUor of England, if wisdora in counsel and eloquence in
debate would have been titles to so proud a distinction.
But his class is that of American Statesraen. In that class
he is to find his true magnitude. As he stood there he is to
take his place forever in our system. To that constellation he
has gone up, to that our telescopes or our naked eye are to be
directed, and there I think he shines with a large and unalter
able glory.
In every work regard the writer's end. In every life regard
the actor's end.
In saying this I do not mean to ignore or disparage his rank,
also, in the profession of the law. In that profession he labored,
by that he lived, of tbat he was proud, to that he brought vast
ability and exquisite judgment, and in that he rose at last to
the leadership of the bar. But I regard that, rather, as a
superinduced, collateral, accessioual fame, a necessity of great
ness, — a transcendent greatness, certainly ; but it was not
the labor he raost loved, it was not the fame which attracts so
many pUgrims to his tomb, and stirs so many hearts when his
name is sounded. There have been Bacons, and Clarendons,
and one Cicero, and one Demosthenes, who were lawyers. But
they are not the Bacons, the Clarendons, they are not the Cicero
and the Demosthenes of historical farae.

SPEECH AT THE WEBSTER DINNER. 445
It is a noble and a useful profession ; but it was not large
enough for the whole of Webster.
In that class, then, let me say next, — which is the class
of American statesmen, — of foremost Araerican statesmen, — it
happened to him to be thrown on our third American age.
This ever must be regarded when we would do hira justice, or
understand hira, or compare him with others.
It is easy to say and to see that if his lot had made him a
meraber of the Revolutionary Congress, he would have stood
by the side of Washington and Jefferson, Adaras and Chase,
and that frora his tongue, too. Independence would have
thundered. It is easy to say and see that it would not have
been that his lips were frozen and his arm palsied ; that
the cabals of Gates, of Conway, could have gone undetected
there ; that a foolish fear of long enlistments would have de
layed the great strife ; that so raany retreats, pinched winter-
quarters, blood traced on the snow by the naked feet of bleed
ing men, would have proved that the want of funds and the
fear of unpopularity were too strong for the sentiment of
Liberty !
It is easy to say, too, and to see that if he had been thrown
on the constitutional age he would have been found with Hara
ilton, Jay, and Madison ; that his pen, too, and his tongue
would have leaped to impress that generation with the nature
and necessity of that great work ; that he would have risen to
the utraost height of the great arguraent, and that on the pil
lars, on the foundation-stones of that Constitution which he first
read on the little pocket-handkerchief, his narae, his wisdora,
too, would now be found chiselled deeply. But he was cast
on the third age of our history, and how was his part acted
there ?
In this class, then, let rae say further, of the foreraost of
great American statesmen, I say there was never one, of any
one of our periods, — I shall not except the highest of the
first period, — of a more ardent love of our America, and of
the whole of it; of a truer, deeper, broader sense of what the
Farewell Address calls the Unity of Governraent, — its nature,
spring, necessity, — and the raeans of securing it ; or who said
more, and did raore to sink it deep in the Araerican heart. Of
the relations of the States to our systera, — of their powers,
VOL. II. 38

446 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
their rights, their quasi sovereignty, — he said less, not because
he thought less or knew less, but because he saw there was less
necessity for it. But the Union, the Constitution, the national
federal Ufe, the American name, — E Pluribus Unum, — these
filled his heart, these dwelt in his habitual speech.
This, I think, exactly, was his specialty. To this raaster
passion and raaster sentiraent his whole life was subordinated
carefully, fle was totus in illis. fle began his public course
in opposition to the party which had the general governraent;
and he dearly loved New England ; but he " had nothing to
do with the Hartford Convention." He drew his first breath
in a Northern State and a Northern region ; his opinions were
shaped and colored by that birth-place and by that place of
residence ; the local interests he powerfully advocated ; for
that advocacy he has even been taunted and distrusted. But
it was because he thought he saw, and just so far as he saw,
that the local interest was identical with the national interest,
and that that advocacy was advocacy for the whole, and that
policy was American policy, that he espoused it.
Some aged clergyman has been reported to have said, that
the sermon — whatever the theology, whatever the ability —
was essentially defective, if it did not leave on the hearer the
impression that the preacher loved his soul, and that God and
the Saviour loved it. I never heard him make a speech, — a
great speech, — whatever were the topic, or the time, that
did not leave the impression that he loved nothing, desired
nothing, so rauch as the good and glory of America ; that he
knew no North and no South ; that he did not seem to sum
mon around him the whole brotherhood of States and men,
and hold them all to his heart ! This gave freshness and
energy to all his speech. This set the tune to the universal
harmony. Even his studies revealed this passion, fle knew
American history by heart, as a statesman, not as an anti
quary, should know ft ; the plain, noble raen, the high
airas, and hard fortunes of the colonial tirae ; the agony and
the glory of the Revolutionary War, and of the age of the
Constitution, were aU famUiar to hira ; but chiefly he loved to
mark how the spirit of national life was evolving itself all the
while ; how the colonies grew to regard one another as the
children of the same mother, and therefore, fraternally ; how

SPEECH AT THE WEBSTER DINNER.

447

the coraraon danger, the coraraon oppression, of the ante-revo
lutionary and revolutionary period served to fuse thera into
one ; how the Constitution raade them forraally one ; and how
the grand and sweet and iraperial sentiraent of a united national
life came at last to penetrate and warm that whole vast and
various mass, and raove it as a soul.
" Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."
In this master sentiraent I find the liey to all his earlier and
all his later policy and opinions. Through his whole lifetirae,
this is the central principle that runs through all, accounts for
all, reconciles all.
In the department of a raere adventurous and originating
policy, I do not think he desired to distinguish himself. In
the department of a restless and arrogant and claraorous
reforra, I know he did not wish to distinguish hiraself. The
general tendency of his mind, the general scope of his politics,
were towards conservation.
This rested on a deep conviction that, if the government
continued to exist, and this national life continued to be kept,
and if these States were held in peace together, the growth of
it, the splendid future of it, were as certain as the courses of
the seasons, fle thought it wiser, therefore, always, that we
should grow great under the Union, than that we should be
forced to grow great by legislation. fle thought it wiser,
therefore, at first, — local opinion may have, or may not
have, a little influenced this, — to let America grow into a
manufacturing people, than that she should be forced to becorae
so. But when that policy was adopted, and miUions had been
invested under it, and a vast, delicate, and precious interest
had grown up, then it seemed to hira that just so much had
been added to our Araerican Ufe, that for so much we had
gone forward in our giant course, and he would guard it and
keep it. -
He did not favor a premature and unprincipled expansion of
territory ; though he saw and rejoiced to see, if America
continued just, and continued brave, and the Union lasted, how
widely — to what Pacific and tropic seas — she must spread,
— and how conspicuous a fame of extent was spread out before

448 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
her. But when the annexation was made and the line drawn
and the treaty signed, then he went for her, however " butted
and bounded ; " then he kept steady to the compact of annexa
tion ; then there was no date so small, no line so remote, that
he would not plant on it the ensign all radiant, that no foreign
aggression might come ! Here you have the Websterianism of
Webster. I cannot trace this great central principle and this master
sentiment and trait which is the characteristic of his whole
politics, through the last years of his life, withcut awakening
feelings, some feelings unsuited to the tirae. I believe, you
believe, the country and history will believe, that all he said
and all he did, he said and did out of a " fuU heart for the
Constitution," and that the " austere glory " of that crisis of
his America and of himself will shine his brightest glory.
When some years have passed away, if not yet, that civil cour
age, that wisdom which combines, constructs, and reconcUes ;
which discerns that in the political world, in our political world
especially, no theory and no idea may be pressed to its extreme,
and that comraon sense, good teraper, good nature, and not the
pedantry of logical abstraction, and the claraor of interaperate
sectional partisanships, are the true guides of life ; and that
deeraed a glooray foolishness, refuted by our whole history, that
because in this cluster of States there are different institutions,
a different type of industry, different raoral estiraates, they can
not live together and grow together to a coraraon nationality
by forbearance and reason ; that an honest, just, and well-prin
cipled patriotisra is a higher raoral virtue than a virulent and
noisy philanthropy ; and that to build aud keep this nation is
the true way to serve God and serve man — these traits and
these opinions will be reraerabered as the noblest specimen of
the genius and wisdora of Webster. Better than any other
passage, or any other catastrophe, these will be thought most
happily to have " concluded the great epic of his life." I
refer you for them all to his iramortal volumes; lasting as the
granite of our raountains, lasting as the pillars of our capitol
and our Constitution.
They say he was arabltious ! Yes ; as Araes said of Hara-
Uton, " there is no doubt that he desired glory ; and that, feel
ing his own force, he longed to deck his brow with the wreath

SPEECH AT THE WEBSTER DINNER. 449
of iraraortality." But I believe he would have yielded his arra,
his frarae to be burned, before he would have sought to
grasp the highest prize of earth by any means, by any organi
zation, by any tactics, by any speech, which in the least degree
endangered the harmony of the system.
They say, too, he loved New England ! fle loved New
flampshire — that old granite world — the crystal hills, gray
and cloud-topped ; the river, whose murmur lulled his cradle ;
the old hearth-stone ; the grave of father and mother, fle
loved Massachusetts, which adopted and honored him — that
sounding sea-shore, that charraed elra-tree seat, that reclaimed
farm, that choice herd, that smell of earth, that dear library,
those dearer friends ; but the " sphere of his duties was his
true country." Dearly he loved you, for he was grateful for
the open arms with which you welcoraed the stranger and sent
hira onwards and upwards.
But when the crisis carae, and the winds were all let loose,
and that sea of March " wrought and was tempestuous," then
you saw that he knew even you only as you were, Araerican
citizens ; then you saw hira rise to the true nature and stature
of Araerican citizenship ; then you read on his brow only what
he thought of the whole Republic ; then you saw hira fold the
robes of his habitual patriotism around him, and counsel for
all — for all.
So then he served you — " to be pleased with his service
was your affair, not his."
And now what would he do, what would he be if he were
here to-day? I do not presurae to know. But what a loss
we have in hira.
I have read that in> sorae hard battle, when the tide was run
ning against him, and his ranks were breaking, sorae one in
the agony of a need of generalship exclaimed, " Oh for an
hour of Dundee ! "
So say I, Oh for an hour of Webster now !
Oh for one more roll of that thunder iniraitable !
One raore peal of that clarion !
One raore grave and bold counsel of raoderation !
One raore throb of American feeling !
One more Farewell Address ! And then raight he ascend
unhindered to the bosom of his Father and his God.
38*

450 MISCELLANEOUS SPEECHES.
But this is a vain wish, and I can only offer you this
sentiraent —
The birth-day of Webster — Then best, then only well
celebrated — when it is given as he gave that raarvellous
brain, that large heart, and that glorious life, to our coun
try, our whole country, our united country.

APPENDIX.

TRANSLATIONS.

flOR^ THUCYDIDIAN.S:.
1 August, 1845.
[I BEGIN to-day the study of Thucydides. I have read hira
before and read of hira, but I propose now to translate, meditate,
and retain him. I have Arnold's, Bloomfield's, and Haack's edi
tions, with Smith's translations and the best Greek histories.
My great want is a good Greek Lexicon. The prefatory chapters
I must stop occasionally to verify, fill out, and correct ; but I
shaU hasten forward to his history itself. The period, however,
from the Persian to the Peloponnesian War will deraand careful
attention. Even in the introduction, you mark the unity of design which
distinguishes all Grecian art. He has coraposed the history of
the war ofthe Peloponnesians and Athenians. All the earlier
history of Greece is excluded from his subject. Yet a rapid and
general sketch of that history would usefuUy, and should natu
rally, precede and introduce the iraraediate great work. He pre
sents such a sketch, therefore, but he, inform, appears to do it
solely for the purpose of justifying his actual choice of a sub
ject, by displaying the superior iraportance of his period and his
scenes to aU which had gone before. You set out, then, with a
useful review of other facts, but you advert to them mainly and
iraraediately as having for various reasons less interest or cer
tainty or consequence than the facts of the Peloponnesian War.]
(Translation.)
THUCYDIDES. Book I.
I. Thucydides, an Athenian, has composed the history of
the war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians, as the belliger
ents conducted it, having commenced the undertaking iramedi
ately upon the breaking out of the war, and having even then
anticipated that it would be one of great iraportance, and more
worthy of record than any that had preceded it ; a belief to which
he was conducted by observing that the two contending States
were in an extraordinary degree and by every form of resoruce

4>54>

TRANSLATIONS.

prepared for it, and that the entire Greek race was to range it
self on the side of one or the other of those States, — sorae cities
instantly doing so, — others meditating it' 2. For this civU
commotion constituted the most considerable war that ever
befell the Greeks, orihat ever befell a large part of the nations
not Greek, or, as I may say, the great body of the race of man
itself; since of those which immediately preceded it, and those
stUl raore ancient, it is in the first place irapossible, firora reraote-
ness of time, surely to discern the historical truth ; and then, in
so far as I may judge from all the evidence on which, after the
widest and farthest view, I can rely, I do not think that they
were reaUy great transactions, either as wars or in any other
aspects.^ II. It is certain that the region now called Greece was an
ciently not inhabited in a permanent or settled and secure raan
ner, but that in the earliest tirap there was a continual practice
of transraigration fi:ora one spot to another, and every one was

_ 1 The point on wbich the reader of
history craves assurance is its trUstWor^
thiness. In this particular, 1 do not
know that any affords higher promise
than this of Thucydides. He was born
B. c. 471. The war began 431 b. c.
He was therefore forty years of age at
its commencement ; and he declares
that, foreseeing its importance before
hand, he determined to write its histo
ry, and began the great task with the
breaking out of the war. What means
had he to be accurate? He was an
Athenian, and I think at Athens at that
precise point of time ; his faculties at
their best, his intellect deep, capacious,
full, intimate with the great scientific
and practical minds of the day, — in
tensely stimulated by the stormy scene
beginning to open. There he staid, act
ing and observing, till the seventh year
of the war, when he was assigned the
command of a naval and military force
for the coast of Thrace. This presup
poses character, experience, and activ
ity at Athens, as well as ties, relatives
and property in Thrace itself. He was
sent to encounter Brasidas, among the
most energetic of the Peloponnesian
generals ; he conducted a single enter
prise, that for the defence of Amphipo-
lis, with vigor and skill ; he was unsuc
cessful, was banished by a demagogue,
and retired to Scapte Hyle in Thrace,
at the age of forty-eight, calm, firm,

passionless, to observe, to study, and to
write. In all historical literature, I
know no combination of circumstances
giving such assurance of certainty of
knowledge. During his banishment, he
is said to have availed himself of Pe
loponnesian sources of information.
Treason to Athens, infidelity, revenge,
never have been imputed to him. Per
haps we have gained impartiality, ju
dicial calmness and indifference, truth
and use, by the campaign and the con
demnation which withdrew Thucydides
from participation in one side, and
gave back to mankind, to posterity,
and to history the mind which belong
ed to them.
How can Thucydides say of the
Persian War that it was not intrinsical
ly and absolutely great, both as a war
and in all aspects ? Is this true ? Could
he have thought so ? I think the TraTim-
oTEpa alone were in his mind, or chiefly ;
for he blends the difficulty of discern
ing the truth and the far view from
which his researches had set out with
the want of greatness, as applicable all
to the same events or times.
Yet, — ch. 23, • — he speaks of the
brief duration of the Persian War and
the fewness of its battles as showing its
comparative insignificance. Therefore
does not Thucydides rhetorically de
preciate the past and exaggerate the
present ?

HOR^ THUCYDIDIAN^. 455
accustomed easily to abandon his place and possessions, when
ever compelled to do so by an invasion of a greater number.
2. For since there was no trade by sea, and no man mingled
without fear and without hazard with other men, on land or
water ; since no one appropriated to himself or used what he
had, farther or more than to sustain his daily life, accuraulating
nothing, nor so much as planting a tree or a vine, uncertain when
another raight invade and snatch the product of his toil away, —
the cities too all unwalled ; and since raoreover it was univer
sally thought that the needful supply of daily sustenance raight
be found anywhere, raen habitually and perpetually migrated,
without difficulty, without resistance, without regret. For
this reason, too, the nations or tribes of these times did not grow
to strength by the raagnitude of their cities, or by any other form
of military preparation.^ 3. These changes of inhabitants were
most frequent in the more fertile regions of Greece, — in what
is now Thessaly, for example, in Bceotia, in the greater part of
the Peloponnesus, except Arcadia. 4. For by means of the fer
tility of the soil, inequalities of fortune were produced, some citi
zens acquiring raore wealth than others, and thus dissensions and
revolutions were brought on, by which they perished. Such,
too, were raore exposed to the incursion of foreign or distinct
tribes. 5. Attica, on the other hand, exempted from internal
dissension and revolution, from the remotest period, by the
lightness or thinness of its soU, untempting, the same men had
inhabited immeraorially.^ 6. And in this instance of Attica,
its history and its comparatively raore rapid growth, I remark a
proof of the statement which I before advanced, that it was
1 The historical fact here asserted in these sections ? The ante-Hellenic ?
may well be presumed to be true and The age subsequent to the diffusion
to have been true from the time the upon Greece of the Pelasgi, — that in
first Pelasgic or ante-Pelasgic hunter which foreign settlers are beginning to
set foot in Greece, for ages of barba- approach Greece ? Or is it true of
rism. The great feature in the sketch many periods, the original occupation
is the practice of migration. There by the Pelasgi, that of the accession of
was no fixed individual or social or foreigners, that of the development of
political state, residence, and exist- the Hellenes, — all the time down to
ence. All intercourse was hostile and the dawn of the historic period ?
fearful. No one made accumulations 2 The fact of infrequency of change
of property, or sought from property rests on Thucydides. His disposition
more than support of daily life, the to speculation you discern in his ex-
means of which he could find any- planation of the fact. Inequalities of
where. He walled no cities, he plant- fortune, larger accumulations side by
ed no vine or tree. He expected to side with smaller, induce revolution,
be driven out by a greater number and dissension, and invite hostility; and
a greater strength. His habits and these inequalities and accumulations
sentiments were formed to it; he of- you find only — while as yet trade has
fered slight resistance, and he suffered no existence — on rich soils.
little regret. What epoch ia described

4>56

TRANSLATIONS.

attributable to this practice of incessant migration that other
parts of Greece did not thrive. The truth is, that of those who
by faction or by invasion were driven from other parts, the
raore wealthy and more considerable retired on Athens, as a
place of security ; and being admitted to the privilege of citizen
ship, they even in the earliest ages so filled the city with inhab
itants, that at length, Attica becoming insufficient to contain
them, colonies were sent forth to lonia.^ ,
III. I discern the political weakness and insignificance of
these old times in these things also, that before the Trojan war
Greece had accomplished no united and national undertaking,
nor had its cities and tribes so rauch as the comraon narae of
Greece. Before the age of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, this
designation, Hellas, appears not to have existed at all; and

1 This passage is thought to be and
is obscure. I interpret thus : Thucy
dides opens his second chapter by the
statement that anciently migrations
were incessant from place to place in
Greece, and that nowhere were secure
and permanent settlements. He ex
poses the causes ; and declares that by
reason of it the strength of cities and
the preparations of war were not at
tained. He then adverts to the fact
that these migrations were most fre
quent in the most fertile parts; and
gives the reason that there the acquisi
tion of inequalities of wealth generated
• faction and tempted invasion, he in
stances Thessaly and Boeotia as exam
ples of fertile regions torn by faction
and wasted by invasion, and Attica as
an example of a country whose light
soil exempted it from both, and en
abled it at all times to retain its original
inhabitants at home. With this, he dis
misses this incidental or parenthetical
remark about the effect of fertility and
barrenness, and returns to his original
statement that migrations were fre
quent and hindered the growth of
strong cities and the accumulations of
preparations for war. The instance of
Attica — the facts of its history and
the causes of its more rapid growth
than the rest of Greece, afford me a
proof of what I have said, to wit, that
migrations prevented the thriving of
old Greece. Attica was a place of se
curity. Her old population could and
did live, ever safely at home. When

war or faction banished the more
wealthy and powerful of other cities,
they fled to this asylum. Thus, in the
earliest times she became so overstocked
as to be compelled to colonize Ionia.
Comparing this case with the rest of
Greece, you see the influence of migra
tion on prosperity. This case of At
tica — its greater growth — proves my
position that these other places were
checked by migration. To them none
resorted. From them many fled. She
held her own. She welcomed new.
These /ac;.'!, introduced by iic yap &c.,
are the t66e preceding.
The real question, however, is, — is
6u) Tuf fieTOLKiac a repetition and explan
ation of what Aoyof is, or is it the proof
of the Uyogf Is it this, — and the
fact that other parts of Greece did not
grow equally with Attica, proves what
I said above, and leaving the reader to
go back for what he said ? I rather
incline to this; for this assertion, SiH
Sec, is an assertion not made before.
He had not said that others had not
grown or thriven as much as Athens.
He had said migrations were common,
and checked growth. He said where
they were most frequent, where least,
and why ; i. e., from qualities of soil.
But he had not yet said that those
where fewest were most prosperous.
He now says that. The case of Ath
ens suggests it. Here, said he, in this
.fact, to wit, that other parts flourished
less, I find proof of disastrous effects of
migration.

HOR^E THUCYDIDIAN^. 457
every tribe, the Pelasgic raore extensively than any other, gave
its own narae to its own habitation. 2. After Hellen and his
children had come fo be chiefs of power in Phthiotis, they ,were
called in by other tribes to contribute succor from time to time,
and thus one tribe after another, by continuance of intercourse
with them, carae to be called Hellenes ; yet was it long before
that spread to be the prevalent national name.^ 3. And of this
assertion Homer affords the strongest proof; for although writ
ing long after the Trojan war, he does not bestow this name as
a common appellation on all the Greeks, nor does he apply it
at aU except to the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who
were the first Hellenes, as I have before said ; but when he
speaks of the Greeks collectively, he calls them Argives, Danai,
and Achaeans. 4. Neither does he employ the term /3ap/3apoi
as a general designation of all not Greeks, apparently because
the Greeks themselves were not yet set apart and gathered
together by that or any one national name, distinguishing them
from all others. 5. This people, I repeat, whose various cities
and communities thus came gradually and successively to be
called Hellenes, by adopting a common Hellenic language, and
to which, as a whole, that appellation came at last to be ap
plied, although, as we have seen, subsequently to Homer, — this
people, before the Trojan war, in no stage of progress in the
ante-Hellenic or post-Hellenic period, effected any great com
mon enterprise, through weakness and the want of alliance and ,
cooperation with each other. And for even that war they were
able and inclined to unite, only because they had then become
more farailiar with the life of the sea.
IV. The first who constructed a navy, of whom we hear,,
was Minos, who acquired the comraand of the greater part of
the Hellenic Sea, conquered the Cyclades, and first colonized
the larger nuraber of them, having expelled some of their Carian
inhabitants and established his own sons in the government..
Piracy, too, he swept from the sea, as he naturally would do,
as far as he was able, for the sake of securing larger returns of
revenue to himself.
V. Now, anciently, the Greeks and such of the barbarians as
dwelt either on the coasts of the mainland or on islands, after
they had begun raore frequently to traverse the sea in vessels,
1 The general fact that the earliest gion, may be. The wider extension of
inhabitants of the after Greece were the Pelasgic, and its priority to the
disunited tribes, and that before the time and name of Hellen, is also gen-
Trojan war they associated for no com- erally received. Thessaly, where is
mon enterprise, and bore no common Phthiotis, produced the race and name
name, is received. That these tribes by which Greece became called and
gave each its own name to its own re- created.
VOL. II. 39

458 TRANSLATIONS.
devoted themselves to the practice of piracy. Setting forth
under the comraand of leaders of consideration and power, to
enrich themselves and to procure food for those in want, they
would fall upon unwalled towns and on the scattered inhabitants
of villages, and plunder thera, and thence they derived the chief
of their subsistence. And this way of life was marked by no
disgrace, but rather confeiTed soraething of glory. 2. You may
see a proof of this in certain inhabitants of the continent at this
day, who esteem it creditable to conduct a piratical expedition
adroitly and bravely ; and in the old poets, who everywhere in
troduce persons inquiring of those who came into port whether
they were pirates, and who neither represent him to whom the
inquiry is addressed as denying, asharaed of such a calling, nor
him who makes the inquiry as designing it for raatter of re
proach. 3. On land, too, this life of reciprocal plunder was led.
To this very day many parts of Greece retain this old condition
of society and manners. As the Locri-Ozolasand ..SItolians and
Acarnanians, and the continent nearest to them. Their custom
of going arraed while engaged in their ordinary occupations
has descended to these people from the usages of the old piracy.
VI. For in that earlier and unquiet day all Greece wore
arms, for the reason that settlements were unfortified, travel was
unsafe, and all habitually lived with weapon in hand, like the
barbarians. 2. Those parts of Greece in which this practice
survives, prove and exemplify what then was the universal con
dition of society. 3. Of all the Greeks the Athenians first dis
used the wearing of arms, and then relaxing the severity of an
cient customs, passed into a raore refined and luxurious mode
of life. It is even now only a short tirne since the more elderly
of the wealthier class of Athenians ceased to wear, — so luxu
rious had their habits of dress become, — linen embroidered gar
ments, and to wreathe their hair into a topping clasped around
by golden grasshoppers ; whence also among the elderly men of
their kindred lonians, a similar fashion prevailed. 4. A plain
and simple dress, of the style of the present day, was first
adopted by the Lacedaemonians and woru by ail classes. In all
things else, too, or in raost things as well as in dress, the rich
and the many of Lacedaemon lived in equality. 5. They were
the first who appeared naked publicly, and stripping themselves
for all to see, anointed themselves for the games. For anciently
the athletes in the Olympic contests strove with broad girdles
about them, for decency, and it is but recently that this prac
tice [upon which the Lacedaemonians first innovated,] has
wholly ceased. So among some of the barbarians at this day,
especially the Asiatics, contests of boxing and wrestling are ob
served, and the competitors wear similar broad girdles. 6. Many

HOR^ THUCYDIDIANiE. 459
other points of reserablance might we indicate between the cus
toms ofthe ancient Greece and those of modern barbarism.
VII. Cities built subsequent to the raost ancient period, and
after navigation had been rendered more safe and practicable,
and with larger accumulation of wealth, were constructed with
walls at the very- sea-coast, and were made to coramand isth
muses for the sake of trade, and for strength against neighbors.
But those founded in that earlier period, by the reason of the
prevalent piracy, were built far inland, both those of the conti
nent and of the islands ; for those who dwelt near the sea,
though not following the sea, jDlundered one another ; and to
this day they are built far inland.
VIII. Of all pirates, the islanders, who were both Carians and
PhcEnicians, were not the least active and famous. These Ca
rians and Phoenicians colonized [successively, however,] most of
the islands. An illustration of which was recently afforded ;
for when the Athenians undertook the purification of Delos, and
removed the graves of those who had died therein, above half
were discovered to be Carians, recognized by the fashion of
their arms which were buried with them, and by the raode of
interment, the same now practised by them. 2. After Minos
had constructed his navy, navigation became more practicable
and safe and common ; for the old robbers of the islands were
removed by him, and at the same time he planted on many of
them new colonists ; 3. and those who lived on the sea-coast
becoming more wealthy, adopted a more settled and civilized
mode of life, and some of the wealthiest encircled themselves with
walls. The poorer, for gain, submitted to serve others, and the
richer and more powerful subjected the weaker and less wealthy.
4. And thus having advanced to a greater degree of power, at
length, in an after tirae, they united in the war on Troy.
IX. And with regard to that expedition, it seems to rae that
Agameranon was able to assemble the armaraent which was
destined to it, rather by reason of his being the raost powerful
prince of his time, than by reason of the oaths exacted by Tyn-
darus of the suitors of Helen. 2. The more clear traditions of
the Peloponnesus assert that Pelops first- acquired power therein
by the wealth which he brought from Asia to a people who
were poor, and thus, although a foreigner, gave his name to the
country, and afterwards became still more renowned in his pos
terity. Atreus was his son. Having slain Chrysippus, his half
brother, the son of Pelops, he fled to the court of Burystheus his
nephew ; and he, when he set out on his expedition to Attica, for
this relationship, committed to him Mycenae and his whole gov
ernment to administer in his absence. ,In that expedition Eurye-
theus died by the hands of the HeracleidEe in Attica ; and ther*-

460 TRANSLATIONS.
upon Atreus — the Mycenaeans through fear of the Heracleidae
desiring it, holding, too, a high estimation of his ability, and won
by his cultivation of the favor of the masses — acquired the
throne of Eurystheus, and made the line of Pelops greater than
that of the Perseidse.i 3. To this throne and this power Aga
memnon succeeded, and thus, I think, and by the acquisition of
a larger naval force than elsewhere existed, was enabled, more
by the terror he inspired than by the favor which he attracted,
to compel the enterprise against Troy. 4. I say by the acqui
sition of a superior naval force ; for he appears to have corae
attended by raore ships than any other, and furnishing vessels
too for the soldiers of Arcadia, — as indeed Horaer establishes,
— if we raay rely on such testimony, — who, in the passage
wherein he traces the transmission of his sceptre, declares him
" to be king over many isles and all Argos." Of many isles he
could not have been king, — dweUing on the Continent, — nor
of any but those few iraraediately adjacent to it, unless he had
possessed supreraacy at sea. 5. Frora the extent and character
of this expedition to Troy, we may forra a conjecture of those
which preceded it.
X. That Mycenae was small — as indeed what city of that
far remote period seeras for its magnitude worthy of notice —
affords no satisfactory proof that this armament was not as con
siderable as the poets have sung, and as the received opinion
deeras. 2. For if the city of the Lacedaemonians were wasted
and deserted to-day, and its temples and the foundations of its
great structures only were left, there would be cherished in the
course of time, I think, with those of after ages, a general dis
belief that its power ever justified its renown. Yet do the La-
cedsemonians possess two of the five divisions of the Pelopon
nesus, and command it all, and raany allies beyond it ; but their
city not being corapactly built, nor containing in it any consid
erable variety of temples and other great structures, — distrib
uted rather into separate viUages, in the old fashion of Greece,
1 Arrived at the age of Agamemnon, the sea. The age and customs of pi-
let us sum up and complete the sketch racy sketched. Its suppression paved
of the historical facts and dates of the the way for permanent settlements.
times before. Tbe Hellenes issuing The accumulation of wealth aud the
from Phthiotis in Thessaly, gave their advancement of civilization, fitting at
name successively to each city, — at last for the expedition to Troy. The
last to all Greece. This is after Ho- Asiatic origin of Pelops, the bestow-
mer. Still, before the Trojan war, no ment of his name on the Peninsula, —
united enterprise is undertaken. For the accession of Atreus to his throne
that even they were fitted at last only and that of Eurystheus, prefacing a
by becoming naval powers. Minos grand and strong succession for the
first created a navy, expelled the Ca- son and grandson Agamemnon, and
rians from the Cyclades, colonized blending the lines of Perseus and of
them, and swept the old piracy fiom Pelops.

HORiE THUCYDIDIAN^. 461
— it would appear inferior to the reality. If, on the other hand,
a sirailar calamity should befall Athens, we raight infer frora her
ruins that she had been double her actual dimensions. 3. Hasty
incredulity, therefore, we are not to indulge, nor to advert rather
to the looks than the actual power of cities ; and we may ra
tionally hold that the army of the siege of Troy was larger than
any which preceded it -from Greece, yet inferior to those of this
tirae, relying so far upon Horaer, who, while as a poet he would
amplify and aggrandize it, yet leaves it smaller than those of
the present day. 4. Homer makes the expedition to consist of
twelve hundred ships. Those of the Boeotians he raakes to con
tain one hundred and twenty men, — those of Philoctetes fifty,
— expressing, I think, only the largest and the smallest numbers ;
for in his catalogue of the ships he mentions the numbers in no
other vessels. That all on board were at once rowers and sol
diers, is probable. With regard to the ships of Philoctetes,
he expressly declares all who rowed to have been archers
also ; and that there should have been raany supernumeraries
on board, except the kings and chiefs, is unlikely, as the ships
were full of warlike equipments and without decks, like the
pirate vessels of an earlier day. 5. Making an average, then,
of the numbers in each of the twelve hundred ships, the whole
armament, when you consider that all Greece united to send it
forth, will not appear to have been very considerable.
XL The cause of this I do not find so much in the fewness
of the inhabitants of Greece, as in their want of the ways and
means of war. For want of provisions they led forth a smaller
force than otherwise they might and would, and such an one
only as they thought might by force subsist itself. Arrived at
the seat of war, they defeated the eneray in battle. This is
proved by their having been able to fortify their camp with a
wall, which else they could not have done. It is quite plain,
too, that they did not subsequently bring their whole force into
action, but for want of provisions they were obliged to be
diverted towards the cultivation of the Chersonesus and to
piracy, whereby the Trojans were enabled to hold out by force
for ten years, being at all times equal to that part of the scat
tered forces of the Greeks which remained to prosecute the war.
2. But had they carried with them an adequate supply of the
means of the service, and could they with united forces, undiverted
by agriculture or piracy, have pressed the siege uninterruptedly,
they could easily have taken it by battle ; since a detachment
of them alone were able always to oppose the Trojans. Sitting
down regularly to besiege it, in less time, with less effort, they
could have effected the object in view. 3. Through want of
means of war it was that all military expeditions before tbis
39*

46£ TRANSLATIONS.
were inconsiderable ; and this, more renowned than any of them,
appears to have been inferior to the fame with which poetry has
invested it.
XII. And after the Trojan war, too, Greece stiU presented
the same forra of life, raigrating from place to place, unsettled,
so that it might not yet rest and grow. 2. The return of the
Greeks, so long deferred, produced raany changes, and revolu
tions or seditions followed in many cities, I may say every
where, which expelled portions of the inhabitants, who then set
forth and planted colonies elsewhere. 3. For example, the na
tion now called Boeotians, in the sixtieth year after the taking
of Troy, being expeUed from Arne by the Thessalians, settled
as a colony in the State now called Boeotia, before that called
Cadmeis, although there had been a detachment from them in
that State before, of whom were those of that narae who shared
in the Trojan war. And in the eightieth year after the taking
of Troy, the Dorians, with the Heracleidae, took possession of
and held Peloponnesus. 4. So that through a long series of
difficulties it was, and after a long tirae, that Greece became
settled and at rest. When it did so, it began to send forth
colonies, and the Athenians planted Ionia and many of the
islands, and the Peloponnesians planted the greater part of
Sicily and of Southern Italy, and sorae portions of other parts
of Greece. AU this era of colonization was subsequent to the
Trojan war.
XIII. And now Greece having grown raore powerful and
more rich, there were in alraost all her cities tyrannies estab
lished, individual accuraulation of wealth having greatly in
creased. The earlier form of governraent had been monarchic,
hereditary, and with defined prerogatives. Now also the Greeks
began to buUd navies, and to attach themselves raore closely
to the sea. 2. And the Corinthians are related to have first
attained to a naval architecture very closely reserabUng that
which now obtains, and to have constructed trireraes first at
Corinth. 3. It is quite certain that Ameinocles, a Corinthian
ship-builder, constructed four vessels for the Saraians, about
three hundred years before the close of the war whose history I
have undertaken, and that the earliest naval battle of which we
know, was one between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans, two
hundred and sixty years prior to the close of that war. 5. This
early naval superiority of Corinth in war was attributable to its
situation on the Isthraus, by means of which feUcity of position
it became a mart of trade for all the Greeks ; since from the
earliest times the tribes, both within and without the Pelopon
nesus, holding intercourse raore by land than sea, raingled with
each other through the Corinthian territory. Hence, the city

HORiE THUCYDIDIANiE. 463
became rich, as is indicated by the old poets, who call the place
," the wealthy." And after general Greece had turned itself some
what more to naval life, Corinth by its own more considerable
fleets, of which I made mention before, contributed prominently
to clear the sea of piracy, and thus making itself an enlarged
mart, both for the trade of the water and the land, grew still
more powerful by a still larger accession of wealth. 6. Next
to Corinth the lonians acquired a considerable navy in the time
of Cyrus the first king of the Persians, and of Cambyses, his
son ; and during the war with Cyrus, in which they were in
volved, they for sorae tirae asserted the mastery of the sea
which washes their coast. Polycrates, who was king of Saraos
during the reign of Carabyses, having a predominant naval
force, subjected other islands, and having taken Rhenea, an
nexed it to the Delos of Apollo. The Phocaeans, too, who
engaged in founding Massilia, vanquished the Carthaginians
in a battle on sea.
XIV. These were the raore important of the ancient naval
forces and states. And these navies, it is quite certain, for
many generations after the Trojan war, contained very few
triremes, but were composed mainly of long sharp ships, single
banked and of fifty oars, according to the model of the time of
the Trojan war. 2. And it was only just before the Persian
war and the death of Darius, who succeeded Cambyses on
the throne of Persia, that the tyrants of Sicily, and the
Corcyrseans, possessed any considerable number of triremes ;
and these last were the only navies worth mentioning which
existed in Greece before the expedition o:^ Xerxes. 3. For the
.^ginetans and the Athenians, and any others possessing any
fleets, had inconsiderable fleets, chiefly of the class of single-
banked fifty-oars. And it is now quite recently that Themis^
tocles persuaded the Athenians, then engaged in war with the
.iEginetans, and expecting daily an incursion of the barbarians,
to construct the ships in which they fought, and these were not
completely, decked.
XV. And these were the earlier and the later navies of
Greece. Yet those chiefly rose to power who possessed them,
acquiring by that means revenues and dominion over others.
For they reduced and annexed the islands. Such especiaUy did
so whose territory had before been insufficient. 2. On land
there was no war whence dominion could be won. AU such
hostilities were directed only against the adjoining neighbor.
Arraies of foreign invasion Greece sent not forth. 3. For her
States did not project and execute expeditions of invasion, by
entering into leagues either of subordination to some large State
or of equality among themselves, but confined themselves to

464 TRANSLATIONS.
strifes with their neighbors. The only considerable exception
was the case of the war of the Chalcidians and Eretrians, in
which the rest of Greece, on one side or the other, generally
participated. XVI. The growth of all parts of Greece was slow. Some
obstacle hindered one, some another. To the lonians it befell,
that when their affairs had advanced to a very prosperous con
dition, Cyrus, the prince of Persia, having conquered Croesus,
and all within the Halys, advanced to the sea, and reduced the
cities of the main land to slavery ; and that Darius subsequent
ly, by aid of a Phoenician fleet, subjected the adjacent islands.
XVII. And with regard to the tyrants of the Greek cities,
having an eye only to their own private interests, looking only
to their own personal security and pleasure, and the aggrandize
ment of their own families, their policy was to govern as quiet
ly and as securely as possible ; and nothing worthy of notice
was achieved by them, unless it were against their several neigh
bors. The Sicilian tyrants, it is true, advanced to a large raeas
ure of power. 2. And thus, by these various influences, it carae
to pass that universal Greece was for a long period crippled and
held down, so that it neither achieved any splendid united en
terprise, and no one city dared attempt anything.
XVIIL And after the tyrant of Athens and of those other
parts of Greece, which, quite universally and even before it hap
pened to Athens, had become subjected to tyrants, had been
deposed, except those of Sicily, by the Lacedaemonians, (for
Lacedsemon, although, from the time of its settlement by the
Dorians, it was torn by factions for a longer season than any
other State whose history we know, yet from a very ancient
time has been under the administration of good laws, and has
never been governed by tyrants ; for it is more than four hun
dred years, reaching backward frora the end of the Pelopon
nesian war, that it has maintained the sarae polity, and has thus
become powerful itself, and able to assist in settling the affairs
of other States), after this expulsion, I say, of the tyrants by
Lacedasmon, it was but a few years before the battle of Mara
thon was fought by the Medes and Athenians. 2. Ten years
after that battle the barbarian again invaded Greece with a
large army, for the purpose of reducing it to slavery. In that
great crisis the Lacedaemonians took the lead of the united Gre
cian States, being the first in power, and the Athenians upon
the approach of the Medes, having determined to leave their
city, broke up their homes, and embarking in ships, became an
armed fleet. Having by a common effort repulsed the barba
rians, it soon happened that all, both those who had revolted
frora the king, and those who, independent before, had associ-

HOR^ THUCYDIDIANiE. 465
ated to repel him, divided into two classes, and attached them
selves, sorae to the Athenians, others to the Lacedsemonians, the
two far most powerful States, and which decidedly took the lead
both by land and sea. 3. And after the coraraon anti-Persian
league had subsisted a brief space, the Athenians and Lacedse-
monians quarreUed, went to war, each accompanied by their re
spective allies ; and throughout Greece, if any States fell into
hostilities with each other, they attached themselves to one or
the other of the two great belligerents. So that from the close
of the Persian war to the beginning of this, by being continu
ally occupied either in concluding truces or prosecuting hostili
ties against each other or their allies, these two States came to
have thoroughly trained themselves to the practice of war, and
becarae the more skilful, as their place of exercise was not the
parade but the field of battle.
XIX. And to speak of the comparative policy of the two
great States, the Lacedismonians did not subject their allies to
the payment of tribute, but took care only that their form of
governraent should be oligarchical, and that they should consult
under that form their own interests only, The Athenians on the
contrary acquired in time possession of the fleets of all their
subject cities except those of Chios and Lesbos, and levied a
stated contribution on thera all ; and their own individual prep
aration for this war was greater, and their own resources and
strength more formidable, and their dominion more extended,
than when formerly they had been in their most prosperous
state as a leading meraber of the as yet unbroken alliance
against Persia.
XX. Such, in fine, I have thought I discover to be the gen
eral outline of our ancient history. I ara aware that it is not easy
to comraand a confident belief of its truth, or certainly a confi
dent reliance on every particular proof, and on the exact series
of deduction, on which I have insisted. For narratives of re
mote ages are distrusted by sound minds, with reason. For
they observe that men habitually receive frora one another the
hearsay of the past, even pf their own country, without inquiry
and without accuracy. 2. The generality of Athens, for in
stance, suppose that Hipparchus was slain by Harraodius
and Aristogeiton while tyrant, unaware that Hippias was the
eldest son of Pisistratus, and succeeded to his father's power,
and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his younger brothers ;
and that Harraodius and Aristogeiton, suspecting, on the very
hour of the consummation of their conspiracy against the ac
tual tyrant, that soraewhat had been betrayed to Hippias by
sorae one of those in the plot, spared him as forewarned ; and
yet, determined before they should be arrested to achieve sorae-

466 TRANSLATIONS.
thing worthy of the inevitable peril in which they stood, hap
pening to meet Hipparchus near the teraple of the daughters of
Leos, superintending the Panathenaic celebration, put him to
death. 3. Other erroneous opinions, touching the actual pres
ent, not the forgotten past, are holden by other Greeks also.
For example, they think the kings of the LacedEemonians do
not give their votes each with one stone, but with two ; and
that there is a Pitanatan lochus in' their army, which never
existed. So little of painful effort with the many is there in the
search for truth, and so naturally do they turn to the received,
in fact, opinion.
XXI. RationaUy, therefore, as sound rainds distrust those
narratives of the past, yet I think that he who from the proofs I
have displayed, shall adopt the conclusions I have formed, and
shall not credit what poets have hymned about the old time,
aggravating and decorating it, and what annalists have con
steucted for attractiveness, not for truth, — stories incapable of
proof or confutation, utterly unworthy of trust from lapse of
tirae, — and which has won its way to the domain and narae of
fable — he, I say, who shall accept the conclusion that what I
have thus sketched is, for its extrerae antiquity, ascertained with
satisfactory certainty on the best proof which can be eraployed,
will not err. 2. And now is it my judgraent of the present war,
that although raen habitually regard that which actually rages,
and in which they actually serve, to be the greatest, and when
it is over, ever return with larger wonder to those raore ancient
still, yet that this war, to those who will raeasure it by its
events, will show itself the greatest of all.
XXII. With regard to the several speeches of those about
to engage in it or already embarked, it was difficult to retain in
memory the exact terms of all thjit was said, difficult to me for
what I heard, and to others who reported to me ; but that
which it appeared to rae every one raight have, with raost pro
priety, said on each successive occasion, adhering always as
closely as possible to the general sense of what actually was
said, this I have recorded as spoken. 2. With regard again to
the facts of the war, I have not deeraed it fit to set down what
I gathered from any random report, but those things only which
I personally knew, or those which I have collected by the most
careful and scrupulous examination of the testimony of others.
3. Difficult and laborious has been this search of teuth, since
even the eye-witnesses of any particular event did not concur in
their relation of it .... , but testified, every one as his memory
might serve or his prepossessions might sway hira. 4. A narra
tive thus divested of all the attractions of fable raay be found less
pleasing to read ; but if those who read to learn the exact truth

HORiE THUCYDIDIAN.aE. 467
of the past, and to form a rational conjecture of that future,
which, after the course of human things, will be as or like the
past, — if such judge ray history useful, it shaU suffice rae ; since
it is coraposed, not as a prize performance for a single reading,
or a single hearing, but for an everlasting possession.
XXIII. Of all the previous wars of Greece the Persian was
greatest ; yet was it quickly decided by two battles on sea and
two on land ; but this, of which I am to write, was prolonged to
a great duration, and was raarked by evils to Greece such as
never befell her in an equal period of time. 2. Never before
were so raany cities taken and wasted, some by barbarians,
otliers by the discordant armies of Greece, some even witness
ing a total change of their inhabitants ; never so raany slain and
driven into exile, some by war and some by civil steife. 3.
Events too, the relations of which are found indeed in the old
traditions, but whose actual occurrence was deeraed doubtful,
became no longer unworthy of belief ; earthquakes, which were
experienced over the greater part of Greece, and of the raost
terrific description ; eclipses of the sun, which were beheld more
frequently than in all the memory of the past ; in some regions
great droughts, fi-om which proceeded famine ; and, not least,
wasting pestilence, which consumed a large part of the whole
Grecian nation. All these portents and calaraities came in the
teain of this war. 4. It was a war of the Athenians and the
Peloponnesians, begun by dissolving the truce of thirty years
which they concluded after the conquest of Eubcea. 5. The
causes which led to it I have recorded, that no one might have
to inquire the origin of a war so great. 6. The real cause,
speaking in the most exact sense, though least in the mutual
avowals ofthe parties, I judge to have been this, — that Athens,
grown great, and inspiring alarra to the Lacedaemonians, forced
them to fight; but the pretexts more formally assigned on the
one side and the other, upon which they dissolved the teuce and
set themselves in array of war, were those which follow.^
XXIV. Epidamnus is a city on his right hand who sails
into the Ionian Gulf; and next it dweU the Taulantii, bar-
' Let me in a brief note survey the made, B. C. 436, began the events with
Greece and the historical world of this which Thucydides opens his regular nar-
moment. The truce, made for thirty rative. The power of Athens was then
years, was concluded B. C. 445. The at its highest. It was the era of the
security of Greece against Persia had Athenian empire, composed of Athens
been attained B. C. 466, by Cimon, at the mistress and her thousand subject
the Eurymedon. The age of Pericles cities, commanded by her fleet, reflect-
may date from the death of Cimon, or ing her image, moulded by her polity,
from the making of the truce, or from contributing to her treasury, pamper-
the expulsion of Thucydides, B. C. 444. ing her vanity.
In the ninth year after the truce was

468 TRANSLATIONS.
barianS of the Illyrian race. 2. It was planted by a colony
from Corcyra, led out by Phalius, the son of Eratocleides, a
Corinthian, and of the faraily of the descendants of Hercules,
who, according to the ancient custora, had been suramoned to
that command from the mother city. He was attended by
other Corinthians, and by some of the rest of the Doric race.
3. With the course of years, Epidamnus becarae a large and
populous city. 4. Becoraing, then, for a long season, the prey
of internal factions, having their origin frora a war with the
neighboring barbarians, it was greatly reduced, and spoiled of
power. 5. And at last, and before the present war, the people
expelled the aristocracy, who, departing, united with the barba
rian enemy, and carried on a war of plunder on the city by land
and sea. 6. Thus pressed upon, the Epidaranians sent an era-
bassy to Corcyra, as their mother state, entreating her not to
neglect thera, thus perishing away, but to effect a reconciliation
with the aristocratic exiles, and to terminate the barbarian war.
7. The ambassadors of this entreaty seated themselves in the
temple of Juno, and preferred their prayer ; but the Corcyraeans
did not grant it, and sent them away with an unaccorapUshed
mission. XXV. The Epidaranians, ascertaining that they could receive
no aid from Corcyra, were held for a time in a state of uncer
tainty how to act ; and they sent to Delphi, to consult the god
whether they should cast themselves upon Corinth as the planter
of their colony, and atterapt to obtain aid frora her. He coun
selled them to subrait to her protection, and to acknowledge her
sovereignty. 2. Proceeding, then, to Corinth, according to the
advice ofthe oracle, they tendered the state to her; and, having
proved that the leader of their original colony was a Corinthian,
and having announced the response of Delphos, they besought
her not to neglect thera in their exte-eraity, but to interfere for
their succor.^ 3. The Corinthians undertook to assist thera, and
this with justice, for they considered Epidamnus as not less
1 The leading idea of Thucydides mocracy the Athenian Constitution.
is, that the sources of the antagonisms Oligarchs everywhere favored Sparta
of this war were: I. Tribal; Doric — Democrats everywhere Athens.
against Ionian ; II. Constitutional. III. Add to this any possible view of
I. Sparta led the Doric, Athens the policy by which each city might from
Ionian sentiment. Yet, 1. Athens, re- time to time be actuated, and you have
gardless of tribal ties, asserted her em- reasons of race, of government, poli-
pire on the sea everywhere ; 2. States, tics, and policy, to incline each to one
neither Doric nor Ionian, acted in the or the other of the great rivals. Ha-
war ; 3. Ionian States sometimes resist- tred of its own imperial chief by each
ed Athens — Doric States, as Argos and dependent city is an element. The
Naupactus, aided her. particular constitutional or other opin-
II. Oligarchy was the Spartan, De- ions of each ascendant party, another.

nORM THUCYDIDIAN^. 460
their colony than it was the colony of the Corcyraeans ; and they,
at the same time, hated Corcyra for treating with neglect her
mother country, Corinth, and disregarding what was due to the
relation of colonial child and colonial parent. 4. For the Cor
cyraeans did not accustom theraselves to accord to Corinthians
at the public Asserablies the recognized ceremonies of deference,
privileges and points of honor, nor to select a Corinthian to per
form the first part at sacrifices, as was the wont of other colonies
towards their parent states. Indeed, they assumed to treat Co
rinth with contempt; having themselves become among the
wealthiest of the Greek states of the time, and for war more
completely prepared than Corinth. Sometimes, too, they boast
ed of their naval prominence, or preeminence, such as became
the successors of the Phaeacians, who once possessed Corcyra,
and had risen to a high maritime supremacy and fame. Emu
lous of such exaraple, they bestowed the greater attention on
their navy, and acquired one of no inconsiderable character, for
they began the war Avith a hundred and twenty trireraes.'
XXVI. Having these grounds of coraplaint against Corcyra,
therefore, the Corinthians with pleasure proceeded to send succor
to Epidamnus, authorizing any who desired to become its inhab
itants to go thither, and detaching troops of Ambracians and
Leucadians and Corinthians to garrison the city. 2. The expe
dition advanced on foot to Apollonia, itself a colony of Corinth,
adopting this route and mode from an apprehension that the
Corcyraeans would intercept their passage by sea. 3. The Cor
cyraeans were enraged when they heard that this body of settlers
and of troops for garrison had gone to Epidamnus, and that the
colony had been yielded up to the Corinthians; and having
sailed thither with twenty-five ships, and subsequently with an
other armaraent, they haughtily and for insult commanded them
to receive back the aristocratic exiles, (for they had come to
Epidamnus, and there had pointed to the graves of their own
ancestors, and there had vindicated their kindred blood, and by
this appeal had solicited their restoration,) and to dismiss the
settlers and the troops which the Corinthians had sent to them.
All this the Epidaranians disregarded and disobeyed. 4. The
Corcyrasans then began the war on thera with forty ships, and
with the aid of the exiles, whose restoration they thus appeared
to be attempting, and with that of the Illyrians, whora they had ^
added to their own forces. 5. Sitting down before the city,
they proclairaed that any Epidaranian or stranger who desired
1 How came Corinth by these allies V sian, — Doric ; Troezene, Doric, of Ar-
1Vhat were their relations to her '? Me- golis ; Epidaurus also ; Hermione also;
gara was settled in some age by a col- Leucadia, colony of Corinth ; Ambra-
ony of Corinth, and was Pelopoune- cia, colony of Corinth.
VOL. II. 40

470 TRANSLATIONS.
to depart might do so unsuffering, but that they should
deal with those who reraained as eneraies. No one ap
pearing to be influenced by this annunciation, the Corcyraeans
proceeded to lay siege to the city, which is situated upon an
isthmus. XXVII. As soon as messengers from Epidamnus announced
to thera that the city was besieged, the Corinthians prepared an
arraed expedition, and atthe same time proclaimed the planting
of a colony at Epidaranus, upon the basis of an equality of
rights of the settlers, one with another, and with those who
should remain in the parent state. It was farther proclaimed,
that if any one were not prepared immediately to set forth with
the new settlers, and yet wished to secure to himself the privi
lege of a colonist, he might, by the payment of fifty drachmas,
reraain at Corinth. Under this proclaraation raany sailed at
once, and raany deposited the money. 2. The Corinthians ap
plied also to the Megareans to convey them forward by ships,
if their passage should be threatened to be intercepted by the
Corcyraeans, and they accordingly equipped eight ships for the
purpose. Pale added four of the CephaUenians. They applied
to the Epidaurians also, who contributed five ; Hermione gave
one ; the Troezenians two ; the Leucadians ten ; and the Am
bracians eight. Of the Thebans and Phliasians they solicited
money, and of the Eleans unarmed ships and money. Of their
own ships they equipped and sent thirty, and three thousand
heavy armed soldiers.
XXVIII. Obtaining information of this expedition, the Cor-
cyrEeans sent ambassadors to Corinth, attended by ambassadors
from Lacedaemon and Sicyon, whom they took with thera, to
demand that the teoops and the colonists who had gone to
Epidamnus should be withdrawn, upon fhe ground that Corinth
had no just cause to interpose in the affairs of Epidaranus, and
no rightful concern with it. ^ 2. They further proposed that if
Corinth persisted in urging such a pretence, the conteoversy
should be submitted to the arbitration of such cities of the Pelo
ponnesus as should be rautually agreed on ; and that she to whora
the colony should be awarded should hold it. 3. Frora war
they dissuaded ; but announced that, if it were resolved on,
they, too, should be compeUed by the hostilities of Corinth to
engage friends whom they should not desire, and of very differ
ent character from those, the Epidaranian exiles, with whora
then they were acting. 4. The Corinthians answered, that, if
the Corcyraeans would withdraw their fleet and the barbarians
from Epidamnus, they would accede to this proposition of refer
ence ; but that it was not fit that Epidamnus should be sus
taining a siege, while Corinth and Corcyra were litigating their

HOR^ THUCYDIDIANJ5.

471

title to it. 5. To this the Corcyraeans rejoined, that if they, too,
would withdraw their forces from Epidamnus, they would do
likewise; or, that they were willing that both should remain
quiet and where they were, and to enter into convention to do
nothing until the litigation should be determined.
XXIX. The Corinthians acceded to none of these proposi
tions; but as soon as their ships were manned and their allies
had arrived, having first sent forward a herald to declare war
against the Corcyraeans, getting under weigh, with seventy-five
ships and two thousand hoplitse, they sailed towards Epidamnus
for the purpose of beginning the war. 2. The fleet was com
manded by Aristeus, the son of Pellichas, and CaUicrates, the
son of Callias, and Timanor, the son of Timanthes ; and the
army by Archetimus, the son of Eurytimus, and Isarchidas
the son of Isarchus. 3. Upon their arrival at Actium, a
promontory of Anactorium, where is the temple of Apollo, at
the raouth of the Ambracian Gulf, the Corcyreeans sent a
herald in a light boat to forbid their approach towards them ;
and they at the same time manned their ships, repairing the
old and equipping the rest. 4. The herald reporting no an
swer of peace from the Corinthians, and the ships of the Cor-
' cyraeans, to the number of eighty, having been manned, (for
forty sail were besieging Epidaranus,) they set forth in order of
naval battle, engaged with their enemies, gained a clear victory,
and destroyed fifteen ships. On the same day, it happened to
their forces employed in the siege of Epidamnus, to reduce it
to surrender, upon the terms that the new comers should be
sold into slavery, and the Corinthians held in chains to await
the further pleasure of the victor.
XXX. After this battle, the Corcyraeans, having first erected
a trophy on Leucimne, a promontory of Corcyra, put to death
aU their other prisoners, but held the Corinthians in chains;
2. and subsequently, when the Corinthians and their allies,
having been defeated, had retired homeward, they rode tri
umphant over aU that region of the sea, and sailing to Leucas,
a colony of Corinth, they laid waste a portion of its country,
and burned Cyllene, the seaport of the Eleans, because they
had contributed ships and money to Corinth. 3. And this
mastery over those seas they asserted for the greater part of the
time after the battle, and ravaged the cities and country of the
aUies of Corinth, until she, as the season was drawing to ^ close,
moved by their exposure and sufferings, placed an army in sta
tion at Actium and around Chimerium of Thesprotis, to protect
Leucadia and her other friends. 4. Over against this force the
Corcyraeans anchored a fleet, and encaraped an array at Leu
cimne. 5. Neither having advanced against the other, but

47a TRANSLATIONS.
having thus sat over against each other till the season ended,
with the approach of winter each returned home.
XXXI. During the entire year after the battle, and during
the next year, the Corinthians, exasperated by the course of the
war of Corcyra, were engaged in building ships and in equip
ping fleets of the raost approved character, procuring, by the
temptation of pay, rowers frora Peloponnesus and the rest of
Greece. 2. Hearing of these preparations, the Corcyrteans
becarae alarmed; and being in alliance with no Greek state,
nor inscribed araong the confederates of either Athens or
Lacedseraon, they deterrained to apply to the Athenians to re
ceive them into alliance, and to attempt to derive assistance
from them. 3. This coming to the knowledge of the Corin
thians, they also sent ambassadors to Athens, lest an Attic fleet,
added to a Corcyrsean, might present an insuperable obstacle
to such terraination of the war as they desired. 4. There, an
assembly having been convoked, the parties came before it for
the discussion of their subjects of difference, and the Corcyrseans
spoke to this effect : —
XXXII. " It is fit, Athenians, that those who approach others
as we now approach you, about to solicit assistance, by whom
no right to any considerable active kindness or alliance has
been already earned, should make it evidently appear first, if
possible, that what is sought will be useful to those of whom it
is sought, but at least that it will not be prejudicial, and next
that it will be received with a constant gratitude ; and if they
do not raake any of these points clear, they ought not to be
angry if they wholly fail to obtain what they seek. 2. The
Corcyraeans have sent us to you in the confidence that in urging
our solicitation of alliance we shall be able to make these points
clear. 3. And yet it happens to us, that that very peculiarity
in our policy by which we have been distinguished, must ap
pear to you inconsistent with our present request, and is found
prejudicial to our interests in the existing crisis. 4. We, who
never would become the allies of any State, now approach to
ask alliance of others : that practice and those counsels of which
we formerly boasted as wisdom and as strength, by which we
shunned exposure to hazards at the will and pleasure of foreign
connections, now leave us destitute and alone for the war with
Corinth, and turn to folly and weakness. 5. It is true that in
the naval battle which has been fought, we did alone repulse
the Corinthians ; but since they are rushing upon us with raore
formidable preparation from Peloponnesus and from the rest of
Greece, since we perceive ourselves to be unable successfully to
contend with them by our own power, and since it wiU involve
a great coramon danger, if we are overcome by them, we are

HORiE THUCYDIDIAN^. 47S
under a necessity to ask aid of you and of others, and we hope
we' shall be excused for adopting a policy in this particular
opposed to that former neutrality, which we practised not from
evil intention, but from error of judgment.
XXXIII. " And yet the happening of this our necessity of
aid, if you are persuaded to aid us, will prove in many respects
useful to yourselves ; — in the first place, because you will carry
succor to those who are assailed by injury, themselves unoffend
ing; and next, because by extending the hand of kindness to
those whose largest interests are at hazard, you will have treas
ured up a benefit, with a certainty, as far as such a thing may be,
that it wUl be eternally reraerabered and restored with enlarge
ment, since we have a navy morci powerful than any other
except your own. 2. Consider, then, what contingency of good
fortune there could be, less likely to occur, or more distressing
to your eneraies, than that au accession of power, which you
would have prized beyond great suras of raoney, and for which
you would have incurred the most burdensome obligations of
gratitude, should spontaneously come to you without peril and
without cost, and should bear with it fame to the people, the
duty of gratitude from those you succor, and strength to the State.
To few, indeed, in all the past time, has such a combination of
utilities happened ; and few there have been, who, soliciting
alliance, have conferred on those by whom they have been suc
cored, security and honor equalling what they have received.
3. If now any one of you holds the opinion that that war, in
the event of which we may aspire to be useful, will not come,
he errs in judgment, and does not perceive that the Lacedaemo
nians are thirsting for hostilities through fear of you, and that
the Corinthians, who have influence with them, and are inim
ical to yourselves, have atterapted to strike a blow at you by
airaing at us beforehand, to the end that we raay not mutually
withstand a coraraon foe, and that they raay not fail through
want of promptness of exertion to accomplish either an injury
to us or an addition to their own power. 4. Our business,
therefore, it should be to anticipate them, and by alliance offered
by us, accepted by you, to concert offensive rather than defen
sive operation.
XXXIV. " K the Corinthians should say that it is not just
that you should admit their colonists to alliance of friendship,
let them learn that every colony which experiences kindness
frora the raother city, cherishes it ; and every one which suffers
an injury is alienated ; for they are not sent forth to be the
slaves, but the equals of those who stay behind. 2. That they
have done us injury, is palpable ; for when we solicited thera to
subrait our controversy concerning Epidaranus to arbitration of
40*

474

TRANSLATIONS.

a third party, they chose rather to prosecute their accusations
by war than in a just and equitable raanner. 3. Let the exara
ple of their treatraent of us, their kinsraen, admonish you neither
to be deceived by sophistey, nor persuaded by open solicitation
into rendering them assistance. For he who has the fewest
services to his eneray to repent of, leads the safest life.
XXXV. " Nor will you break your teuce with the Lacedae-
raonians by adraitting us to alliance, since now we are allies of
neither of the parties to that truce. 2. Indeed, in its terms it is
provided that any Greek city, not now the ally of either, may
attach itself to which it pleases ; 3. and it would be most hard
if they, the Corinthians, may man their fleets from States bound
by the truce, from all other parts of Greece, and not least from
your subject allies, and yet prohibit us frora the aUiance which
we seek, and from aid from any other quarter, and even have
the effrontery to pretend that it would be unjust in you to grant
our prayer. 4. Far juster ground of coraplaint wUl your denial
of our request afford to us. For you wiU have thrust us away,
— us who are in peril and are not your eneraies ; and you wiU
not only have failed to resteain those who are your eneraies and
our assaUants, but you will suffer thera to derive accessions of
strength frora your own erapire. This is unjust. You ought
instead, either to put under and restrain such of their forces as
are hired from your territory, or to send us secret and small aid,
or admitting us openly to alliance, effectually assist us. 5. We
present to you, as we prefaced at first, many inducements of
advantage to admit us to the alliance which we seek ; among
the greatest of which is that we have the same eneraies with
yourselves, — that surest of all pledges of fidelity, — and those
not inconsiderable, but of strength severely to injure those who
desert their connection. It is the alliance of a naval, not of an
interior power, too, that is offered you, and therefore its rejec
tion involves far other and raore iraportant losses of advantage.
The first atterapt of your poUcy should be to permit no one but
yourselves to possess a fleet at all ; but if you cannot effect
this, to have the strongest naval state for your friend.
XXXVI. " And if there be any one to whora these shaU seera
to be advantageous issues of the proffered alliance, but who yet
fears, lest if he act upon them, he shall break the existing te'eaty,
let him assure himself that even under the influence of such
fears, if strengthened by alliance, he will become raore really
formidable; while, unstrengthened by such alliance, despite all
the bold security with the delusive sense of which the observ
ance of the treaty would soothe him, he will become only weaker.
Better the power acquired by breaking, than the security hoped
for from keeping such a teeaty. Let him consider, too, that he

HOR.a; THUCYDIDIAN.a;. 475
now consults not more on the welfare of Corcyra than on that
of Athens ; and that he does not discern her true interest, if he
hesitates, from a too narrow attention to the passing moment to
attach to her against that war so close at hand, a city on whose
hostility or friendship the largest consequences of good or evil
turn. 2. For it lies in the very path of the voyage to and frora
Italy and Sicily, so that it can prevent a fleet frora those regions
assaiUng the Peloponnesus, and can facilitate the passage of
your fleets destined to assail them ; and in other respects pre
sents a most advantageous connection. 3. And now, to com
prise the substance of the matter, — the parts and the whole into
the briefest possible summary, — let this single view admonish
you not to reject our appeal. In all Greece there are but three
considerable navies — yours, ours, and that of Corinth. If you
suffer two of these to become united, and Corinth seizes
upon ours, you will have single-handed to fight with Pelopon
nesus and with Corcyra too ; but if you accept our alliance, you
will be able to meet the Peloponnesians with a fleet outnum
bering theirs by the whole accession of our own." Thus spake
the Corcyraeans ; and then the Corinthians thus : —
XXXVlI. " It seeras necessary, since the porcyraeans have
not only addressed theraselves to the subject of admission to
aUiance, but have been pleased to accuse us of having done
them wrong and of pressing thera even now with an unreason
able war, that we should call to mind some things pertaining
to both these subjects, before advancing to the other and main
consideration ; to the end that you may the more clearly per
ceive the ground of our request, and may with surer intelligence
decUne to satisfy their needs. 2. They say, then, that upon a
prudential policy they have never conteacted an alliance. But
we say they hai^e pursued this system on a raotive, and for an
end, not creditable but disgraceful to them, for evil and not for
good ; — since we say they have shunned an aUy because they
neither wished to have a witness of their crimes, nor to expe
rience the shame of invoking help to corarait thera. 3. Their
city too, made self-sufficing by its position, enables them,
when they have done an injury to judge it for theraselves, in
stead of subraitting it to the determination of others. Since
while they may seldora have occasion to sail to the ports of
their neighbors, necessity so often drives others to take refuge
in theirs. 4. And herein lies the secret of that abstinence from
foreign connection which they so speciously boast ; not that
they fear that they should thus be drawn in to aid in the inflic
tion of Injustice, but that they want to have the doing of all the
injustice to themselves ; to take by force when strongest, by
fraud when weakest ; and be spared the blush of shame which

476

TRANSLATIONS.

the eye of a witness raight enkindle. 5. Needless is it to say
that if they were the virtuous men they pretend to be, the less
they are in the power of others, the more signally might they
manifest their virtue, by doing and submitting to justice un-
compelled. XXXVIII. " Virtuous men however they are not, neither in
their intercourse with us nor with others. Colonies of our
planting, they have ever stood coldly aloof; and now they raake
war on us, alleging that they were not sent forth for the purpose
of being subjected to iU-treatraent fi'ora the mother-city. 2. To
which we reply, that we too did not send them forth for the pur
pose of being subjected to insolence at their hands, but that we
raight retain iraperial relation to thera, and receive the accus
toraed and suitable honors of that relation. 3. Our other col
onies honor us, and love us with a strong fiUal love. 4. It is
plain, then, if we give satisfaction to the greater nuraber, the
discontent of this single colony must be unreasonable ; nor
do we make a discreditable war upon it, since our modera
tion has been extrerae. 5. Nay, had we failed in sorae
point of right, it would have been honorable to thera to
yield to our irritation, while it would have been disgrace
ful for us to have violently pressed upon their raoderation.
6. But puffed up with pride and wealth they have in raany
other respects done us injuries ; and more recently, Epidamnus,
which, whUe it was torn by dissensions, they did not seek to
possess, the raoment we set forth to assist it, they seized and
held by force.
XXXIX. " They say, too, they were willing that this conteo
versy should have been determined by fair judicial teial be
fore they occupied Epidamnus. We answer that he who has
won the cause already, and is secure, means nothing and says
nothing, who then talks of teying it ; he only is sincere, who,
before he begins to fight, is willing to subject his claim and his
acts to an equal, fair arbitrament. 2. But no pretence of this
specious readiness to submit this conteoversy to the determina
tion of justice did these Corcyraeans parade, untU after they
had blockaded the island and after they knew we eould not
overlook the wrong. Hither now they corae, not content with
being guilty of wrong theraselves, but having the assurance to
deraand that you shaU becorae, not their alUes, but their acces
sories; shall becorae our enemies to becorae their friends. 3.
Surely they ought rather to have been here when in a condition
of safety, not after they had wronged us and involved them
selves ; not to beg you for aid to whom they never contributed ;
not to make you responsible to us by adoption of injustice in
which you had at first no share. To entitle theraselves to help

HOR^ THUCYDIDIAN.ai. 477
in their weakness they should long since have iraparted to you
of their strength.
XL. " That we lay before you, then, well-grounded charges,
and that these Corcyi-aeans are violent and grasping, is proved.
2. That you cannot justly accept their alliance, it remains for
you to learn. It is certain that it is ordained in our articles of
teuce that an unregistered state may ally itself to whora it wiU.
But this does not embrace the case of a city allying itself to the
injury of others, but only of such as, without withdrawing frora
any one the aid they owe, seek safety for theraselves in good faith,
and such as do not bring war instead of peace by their alliance,
as Corcyra will not to those who are wise ; as you wiU find she
wUl, if we do not persuade you to reject her. 3. For you would
becorae not raerely helpers of her, but enemies of us, now at
truce with you ; since, of necessity, if you espouse their part, we
must avenge ourselves on them not separately from'you. 4. And
now justice deraands of you that you hold yourselves aloof
frora both belligerents ; but if not so, that you take part with us
and against thera, (since you are united by teeaty with us, but
with thera not so rauch as by teuce,) and not that you sanction
the principle of law that he who deserts his aUies may be ad
mitted to new alliance. 5. When the Saraians revolted from
you, and other Peloponnesians were divided on the question of
assisting them, we gave no vote against you, but distinctly
maintained that every state should be permitted to chastise its
own aUies. 6. If you receive and help those who are guilty of
injustice, as many of your aUies will be found coming to us as
of ours to you. So that you will have introduced a docteine of
law rather against yourselves than against us.
XLI. " Such are the clairas of right which we may prefer to
you, which are decisive by the law of Greece. We think, too,
leaving the raatter of right, we raay solicit and persuade you to
a favor, with which you ought in this crisis to requite us, — us
who have been neither your enemies to do you harm, nor
your friends to interchange, habitually and of course, mutual of
fices of kindness. 2. For when, before the Median times, you
were destitute of long ships for the prosecution of your war
against the JEginetans, you procured twenty of Corinth. And
this friendly service, and that we rendered in the case of the
Saraians, enabled you to conquer ^gina and to punish Saraos.
3. These services, too, were rendered at one of those moments
when men, going out to battle with their eneraies, hold aU things
else as nought in comparison with victory ; when they hold him
who helps thera to be their friend, though before their foe, and
him who hinders thera their foe, though before their friend; for
they will even incur the evils of a bad adrainistration of their

478

TRANSLATIONS.

domestic affairs under the strong excitement of present con
flict. XLII. "Bearing these things in mind, — the young araong
you learning them from the elder, — deem it just to requite us by
similar offices ; and do not be satisfied to hold that this would
be right in theory and in words, but that utiUty, in time of war,
prescribes a different course. 2. For, ever, utUity follows the
closest approximation to the right, and the issue of the war by the
dread of which these Corcyraeans would persuade you to injus
tice, is as yet all uncertain. Scarcely worth while would it be, un
der the influence of that cause, to incur the immediate and open
hostility of Corinth. It were wiser rather, to do somewhat to
reraove the diste'ust formerly excited by the proceedings of Me-
gara, and still cherished. 3. For the last favor rendered, though
smaller, if seasonable, has power to atone for a greater previous
cause of complaint. 4. Do not, either, suffer yourselves to be
drawn into this connection by this offer to give you the alliance
of a powerful fleet, for not to inj ure one's equals is a source of
more strength than are the perilous acquisitions prompted by
the raere temptation of a present palpable advantage.
XLIII. " And now, having ourselves come to require the ap
plication of the principle which we avowed at Lacedaemon, that
every State should be permitted the uncontrolled coercion of its
own allies, we have to ask to receive the benefit of its applica
tion from you ; and that you, to whom we gave our vote, shall
not give yours against us. 2. Requite us, then, as we treated
you, since you cannot fail to know that this is an exigency when
he who aids is a friend indeed, and he who opposes is an enemy
indeed. 3. Admit not these Corcyraeans to alliance against our
wiU, or help them in the wrong they perpetrate. 4. Thus wiU
you do at once what is right in itself and what is expedient to
you." 1
XLIV. Having heard both parties, the Athenian assembly
was twice holden to deUberate. In the first, the reasons urged
by the Corinthians were thought not less weighty than those of
the Corcyraeans ; but in the second, a change of opinion mani
fested itself, and it was determined, not indeed to enter into
general alliance with Corcyra to such extent as to regard the
' The interposition of Corinth for certainly needed it. As between her
Epidamnus in the first instance seems and tho barbarian enemy, she seems to
to have been rightful and even praise- have been admitted by Corcyra and
worthy. E[)idamnus was engaged in a Corinth to be in a just war, in which
war with the barbarians of the neigh- another State might properly assist
boring Continent, who found allies in her.
her own aristocracy expelled by her- She applies to Corcyra for that as-
self I must suppose that for that war sistance, and is peremptorily refused
she had a right to seek alliance, as she it.

HOR.aS THUCYDIDIANiE. 479
eneraies and friends of each the eneraies and friends of the
other, and to be engaged to offensive as weU as defensive oper
ations, (for if the Corcyraeans should please to require thera to
sail with thera against Corinth, it would involve a breach of the
truce with the Peloponnesians,) but to form a league strictly de
fensive, by which they engaged mutually to assist each other,
if any one should assaU Corcyra or Athens, or their aUies. 2.
For they judged that war with the Peloponnesians there must be,
whether they violated the truce or not; and they felt unwiUing
to see Corcyra, with so considerable a fleet, become a depen
dency of Corinth, but desired rather to have them wear each
other out by mutual contention, so that if hostilities must come
between Athens and Corinth, and other cities possessing fleets,
she might find a feebler eneray. 3. It was not overlooked, too,
that this island lay most on the coasting route to Italy and
Sicily. XLV. Upon this policy, and to this extent, the Athenians
received the Corcyraeans to alliance. They sent ten ships to
assist them, accordingly, soon after the Corinthians left the
city. 2. They were commanded by Lacedaemonius, the son of
Cimon, and Diotimus, the son of Strombichus, and Proteas,
the son of Epiclees. They were instructed not to engage in
naval battle with the Corinthians, unless they should sail to
Corcyra, or sorae of the places belonging to thera, and should
threaten to land ; 3. in which case, they were to use every ex
ertion to prevent them. These instructions were given to avoid
the breaking of the truce. The ships proceeded to Corcyra.
XLVI. The Corinthians, when their preparations had been
completed, set sail towards Corcyra, with a hundred and fifty
ships. Of these the ELeans conteibuted ten, the Megareans
twelve, the Leucadians ten, the Ambracians twenty-seven, the
Anactorians one. Corinth herself sent ninety. 2. The ships
of each city had a leader appointed by itself; and the Corin
thian commander was Xenocleides, the son of Euthycles, with
whom four were associated, — four colleagues, — himself the first.
3. Departing from Leucadia, they approached the main-land,
opposite Corcyra, and arrived to seek anchorage at Chimeriura,
in Thesprotis. 4. There opens a harbor, and above it, at a dis
tance from the sea, in Eleatis of Thesprotis, is the city Ephyre.
Near this city, the lake Acherusia moves towards the sea, and
into this lakethe river Acheron, which flows through Thesprotis,
empties itself, and coraraunicates to it its own narae. The river
Thyarais, by its course, divides Thesprotis from Cestrine, and
between it and the Acheron the Chiraerian point advances into
the waves. 5. At this part of the main-land, the Corinthians
anchored and pitched their camp.

480 TRANSLATIONS.
XLVIL Ascertaining this hostile advance, the Corcyrseans
filled one hundred and ten ships with troops, under coramand
of Meiciades and .iEsimides and Eurybatus, and stationed
themselves at one of the small islands which are called Sybota.
Ten Athenian ships were also with them. 2. Their foot-soldiers
were posted on the promontory of Leucimne, with ten thousand
heavy-armed Zacynthian allies. 3. The Corinthians, too, on the
main-land, had many barbarian allies ; for the inhabitants of
that region were always their friends.
XLVIII. When the Corinthians had corapleted their prep
arations, they took provisions for three days, and set saU
by night frora Chiraerium, for the purpose of naval battle, and,
at daybreak, while continuing their course, they observed
the Corcyraean fleet on the main sea, sailing toward them.
2. Upon discovering each other, both sides formed their order
of battle. Upon the Corcyraean right were stationed the Athe
nian ships ; the rest of the line they composed themselves, having
distributed their ships in three divisions, each of which was led
by one of their three comraanders. 3. Such was the Corcyraean
order of battle. The right wing of the Corinthians was held
by the Megareans and Arabraciots ; the centre bythe other allies,
each by himself; the left wing, opposite the Athenians and the
Corcyraean right, by the Corinthians themselves, with their
fleetest ships.
XLIX. Upon the signals being hung out on both sides,
mingling, they engaged in battle, each fleet having nuraerous
heavy-armed troops with archers and throwers of javelins upon
their decks, being in this particular equipped in the old and less
improved mode. 2. The battle was severe, but not in an equal
degree marked by naval science, and rather resembling a battle
on land. 3. For whenever they happened»to run on board one
another, they could not easily disengage themselves, by reason
of the number and disorder of the ships ; and, therefore, teusting
for victory to the heavy-armed soldiers on board, they reraained
facing and fighting while the vessel lay still. There was no
breaking of lines, but on both sides they fought with courage
and strength rather than skill. The battle was disorderly, and
attended by a wild and general uproar. In the progress of it,
the Athenian vessels carae to the assistance of such of the Cor
cyraeans as happened to be most sorely pressed upon, and thus
intimidated the enemy, but did not actuaUy commence battle,
their commanders being deterred by the previous instructions.
5. The right wing of the Corinthians chiefly suffered ; for the
Corcyraeans, with twenty ships, put it to flight, pursued the
scattered ships to the shore, and, sailing to the enemy's encamp
ment, disembarked and bm-nt and plundered the deserted tents.

HOR^ THUCYDIDIANiE. 4S1
6. On this wing, thus the Corinthians and their aUies were
beaten, and the Corcyraeans had advantage. But on the left
wing of the Corinthians, where they themselves fought, they
were decidedly victorious, the twenty ships of the Corcyraean
fleet, itself the sraallest before, not having returned from their
pursuit. 7. Perceiving that the Corcyrffians were hard pressed,
the Athenians began more openly to contribute their assistance,
having hitherto abstained frora coming directly in contact with
any one of the enemy. And as the flight becarae more marked,
and the Corinthians began to be on both sides intermingled
among them, then every one put his hand to the work, and there
was no longer any discrimination of friends from foes, and so
urgent a necessity arose, that Corinthians and Athenians en
gaged with each other in direct conflict.
L. After the rout had become coraplete, the Corinthians
did not atterapt, by lashing to the hulks of the enemy which
they had partially sunk, to draw them off, but they aimed
rather at mere cutting through and through the wrecks to
slay rather than take alive ; and in doing this they slew their
own friends unawares, not having perceived that their right
wing had been beaten. 2. For, as there were many ships on
both sides, and covering a great extent of sea, after they
became intermixed with each other, it was not easy to discrim
inate between victor and vanquished. Indeed, in regard of
the nuraber of vessels in action, this- was the raost considerable
battle in which Greeks had ever engaged Greeks. 3. After the
Corinthians had pursued the Corcyraeans to land, they turned
their attention to their own disabled ships and their own dead,
and recovered the greater number and conveyed them to the
Sybota, whither the land army of their barbarian allies had
marched to cooperate with them. The Sybota is a port of
Thesprotis, without a town. 4. Having accompUshed this,
they formed again in order of battle and sailed toward the Cor
cyraeans, who, with such of their own ships as the action had
left fit for the sea, and with those which had not partaken in
the engagement, and with their Athenian aUies, advanced at
once to meet the Corinthians, fearing lest they might atterapt
to force a descent upon their territory. 5. It was now late, and
the Pffian for the assault had been sung, when the Corinthians
discerned that twenty Athenian ships were approaching thera,
and suddenly retired, keeping their bows to the enemy. These
twenty ships the Athenians had sent to render aid, after their
first ten, fearing, what actuaUy happened, lest the Corcyraeans
should be defeated, and the ten ships inadequate to support
them. LI. Discerning them, therefore, and suspecting that more
VOL. 11. 41

482 TRANSLAT.ONS.
than they could see had arrived from Athens, the Corinthians
slowly retired. 2. By the Corcyraeans they were not imraedi
ately discerned, for they were approaching frora behind, and were
out of their view, aud they were wondering to see the Corin
thians retire, when the cry was given, — " There are ships cora
ing down to us." Upon this, they, too, retired, for it was grow
ing dark, and the Corinthians, by turning away, caused the
suspension of hostilities. 3. So the corabatants separated,
and the battle ended with the approach of night. 4. When
the CorcyrEeans had resumed their station off Leucimne, these
twenty Athenian ships, under comraand of Glaucon, son of Lea*
ger, and Andocides, son of Leogoras, borne through floating
bodies of the slain and through floating wrecks, arrived at the
station soon after they had been first discovered. 5. At first,
for it was night, they were thought to be enemies, and great
alarm was excited ; but after they were recognized, they, too,
carae to anchor.
LII. The next day, the thirty Athenian ships, and such of
the Corcyraeans as were in condition to sail, put to sea sind
proceeded towards the port in the Sybota, where the Corinthi
ans lay at anchor, for the purpose of ascertaining if they would
fight. 2. And they, heaving their ships afloat, and arranging
them in line out from the shore, lay stUl, not being inclined
voluntarily to begin an action, for they perceived that fresh
ships had arrived from Athens, and they were incomraoded by
certain erabarrassraents also, having nuraerous prisoners to
guard on board ship, and having no raeans of refitting on that
uninhabited coast. 3. Indeed, they began to conteraplate re
turning homeu'ard, fearing that the Athenians might be induced
to regard the truce as terminated by the battle, and might en
deavor to intercept them.
LIII. To make trial of their intentions in this respect, they
determined to send messengers in a light boat, without the rod
of truce, to ascertain by inquiry. And these raessengers ad
dressed thera. 2. " You have been guilty of injustice already,
Athenians, by commencing war in violation of the teuce ; for
while we sought to punish our own eneraies, you interposed to
prevent us, sword in hand. And if, now, it is your purpose to
oppose our sailing to Corcyra, or whithersoever we wish, and
thus complete the breach of the teuce, seize our persons first,
and treat us as enemies." 3. Thus they. Such of the Corcy
raeans as heard them shouted, — " Let them be seized at once
and slain." But the Athenians replied ; 4. " We do not, men
of Peloponnesus, begin war nor dissolve the truce. We only
corae to assist the Corcyraeans, our allies. If, therefore, you
desire to go elsewhere; we do not interpose. But if you sail

HOR^ THUCYDIDIANiE. 483
towards Corcyra, or any of its territories, we shall, to the utraost
of our power, prevent it."
LIV. Such was the answer of the Athenians. Upon this,
the Corinthians began to prepare for the voyage horaeward,
and erected a teophy on the Sybota of the mainland. On the
other hand, the Corcyraeans raised and tookup the wrecks and
the dead bodies as they floated towards them, borne by the tide
and the wind, which during the night had scattered them far
and wide ; and erected a trophy on the insular Sybota, as if
they too had conquered. 2. The grounds on which each
clairaed the victory were these. The Corinthians, because they
had the advantage in the action until night, so as to have
brought to their station at Sybota the greater part of the
wrecks and bodies of the dead, and because they had taken
not less than a thousand prisoners, and had sunk about seventy
ships. The Corcyraeans, because they had destroyed near thirty
ships, and, after the arrival of the Athenians, had carried oif
their wrecks and dead, and because the Corinthians had first
retired upon discovery of the Athenian ships, and to their offer
of battle had not met them from Sybota.
LV. Proceeding homeward the Corinthians took Anactorium,
at the raouth of the Arabracian Gulf, by strafagera. It had be
longed in coraraon to Corcyra and Corinth. Placing a Corinthian
garrison therein, they returned home. Ofthe Corcyraean prisoners,
eight hundred, who were slaves, they sold ; two hundred and
fifty they, after putting them in bonds, placed under the guard
of persons appointed to watch them, and treated with a studied
attention, in the view that on their return to Corcyra they
might gain it over to Corinth ; for the greater number of thera
happened to be of the first in point of consideration in the .city.
2., Thus, then, Corcyra had success in this war with Corinth,
and the ships of Athens retired from the island. But the aid
thus rendered by her to Corcyra during the existence of the
truce was the -first occasion of hostilities between her and
Corinth. LVI. Immediately after the transactions which I have now
related, the occurrence which I am now to relate fell out, tend
ing to war between Athens and the Peloponnesians. 2. While
the Corinthians were concerting raeasures to punish them, the
Athenians, suspecting their hostile mind, coramanded the Poti-
daeans, who dwelt on the isthmus of PaUene, colonists of Cor
inth, and tributary aUies of themselves, to deraolish the waU
towards PaUene, to give hostages, to expel the magistrates sent
them from Corinth, and thenceforward to decline receiving
such as the mother country annuaUy deputed. The fear was
that they might revolt and bring off the rest of Thrace to revolt
with thera.

484 TRANSLATIONS.
LVII. These designs against the Potidaeans the Athenians
set on foot iraraediately after the naval action with Corinth;
2. for the Corinthians were now openly on terras of hostility,
and Perdiccas, the son of Alexander the King of Macedonia,
who had been the friend and ally of Athens, had become its
enemy. 3. He became such by reason that the Athenians had
become allies of his brother Philip and Derdas, who were con
cerned in a common war with hira. 4. Dreading the conse
quences of this, he projected a raission to Sparta, for the pur
pose of fomenting a war between Peloponnesus and Athens,
and was attempting to bring over the Corinthians to his con
nection, with a view to cause the Potidaeans to revolt. 5. He
was raaking proposals also to the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans of
Thrace to revolt with Potidsea, deeraing that if he could ac
quire those countries, his neighbors, as aUies, he could with
more hope of success prosecute his war on Athens. 6. Becom
ing apprised of these movements, and anxious to anticipate the
defection of these cities, the Athenians, who had before sent
thirty ships and one thousand heavy-armed troops to that re
gion, under command of Archestratus and ten colleagues,
issued orders, as I have related, to the commanders of their
ships, to exact hostages of the Potidffians, and to deraolish the
wall, and to raaintain a strict watch over the other cities to
anticipate and prevent their revolt.
LVIII. While these events were in progrcFS, the Potidaeans,
who had sent ambassadors to the Athenians to atterapt to per
suade them to force on thera no change of policy, sent also to
Lacedsemon ambassadors, accompanied by others from Corinth,
to procure assistance, if need there should be, after they per
ceived that their utraost efforts would effect nothing useful at
Athens, since her fleet, which had sailed towards Macedonia,
was destined against them too ; and they so far succeeded that
the magistrates of the Lacedaemonians engaged that, if Athens
should assail Potidaea, they would invade Attica. Thereupon,
at the same tirae with the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans, they
revolted and pledged theraselves by the sarae oath. 2. Per
diccas also sought to induce the Chalcidians, who dwelt by the
sea, to leave and destroy their cities, and to remove up to
Olynthus, and make that single city one of great strength ; and
he gave to them part of his territory of Mygdonia to occupy
and enjoy while the war with Athens should continue. They
did so remove accordingly, destroyed their cities and prepared
for war.
LIX. The thirty ships of the Athenians arrived on the coasts
of Thrace, colonized by the Greeks, and found Potidaea and
the other cities in revolt. 2. Their commanders, deeming

HOR^ THUCYDIDIAN^. 485
it impracticable to contend against Perdiccas and the entire
revolted region successfully with their actual force, turned tow
ards Macedonia, — the original object indeed of the expedition,
— and assuraing a station and forraing a junction with PhUip
and the brothers of Derdas, who had descended from the in
terior with an array, they prosecuted the war.
LX. At the sarae time the Corinthians, Potidaea having
revolted, and the Athenian fleet hanging on the coast of Mace-i
donia, apprehensive for the safety of the place, and deeming
• the perU as their own, sent forward a force of sixteen hundred
heavy-armed and four hundred light-armed soldiers, — in part
their own teoops serving gratuitously, and in part Peloponne
sians whom they had hired. 2. This army was commanded
by Aristeus, the son of Adeimantus, always weU affected to Po
tidaea, a friendly regard towards whom was not the least of the
raotives which induced the greater number of the Corinthian
troops to attend hira gratuitously. 3. They arrived in Thrace
on the fortieth day after the revolt of Potidaea.
LXI. News reached the Athenians of the revolt of the cities,
and as soon as they heard that the forces under the command
of Aristeus had reinforced the garrison, they sent to this dis
affected region two thousand of their own heavy-armed troops,
and forty ships, with Callias, the son of CaUiades, for general,
with four others. 2. Imraediately on their arrival, they effected
a junction with the one thousand men who had preceded them,
who had just taken Therma, and were besieging Pydna. 3.
Halting then themselves, they laid siege to Pydna, but very
soon became obliged, by the defection of Potidaea and the arri
val of Aristeus, to conclude an accomraodation and the best
practicable terms of alUance with Perdiccas, and to retire from
Macedonia. 4. They proceeded, therefore, along the coast tow
ard Potidaea, but diverged, before arriving thither, from their
line of march to the left to attack Beroea, and failing in their
attempt on it, resumed their original route. This force con
sisted of three thousand heavy-armed Athenian troops, besides
a numerous body of aUies, and six hundred Macedonians in the
service and attached to the cause of Philip and Pausanias.
Seventy ships accompanied the march of the array. Advanc
ing very leisurely, on the third day they arrived at Gigonus,
and encamped.
LXII. Awaiting the approach of the Athenians, the Poti-
dseans, with their Peloponnesian alUes, took a station upon the
isthmus over against Olynthus, and established a market of sup
plies without the city. 2. They appointed Aristeus coraraander
of the whole foot, and Perdiccas of the horse ; for he had again
abruptly deserted the cause of Athens, and attached himself to
41 *

486 TRANSLATIONS.
that of Potidaea, having designated lolaus to succeed hira in the
post which he left. 3. The plan of Aristeus was to keep the
force under his comraand upon the isthmus to watch the ap
proach of the Athenians, if they should seek to enter it, and
that the Chalcidians and their allies without the isthmus and
the two hundred horse of Perdiccas should remain in Olynthus;
and that when the Athenians should advance against hira, these
coming to his assistance in rear should place the enemy between
two assaults. 4. But CaUias and his associate commanders
detached their Macedonian horse and a few of their aUies to •
Olynthus, in order to shut in those there posted, and so prevent
their cooperation ; and then breaking up their encarapraent, they
advanced directly towards Potidaea. 5. Approaching near the
isthraus, they saw that the eneray had raade his preparation for
action, whereupon they set themselves also in order of battle,
and soon engaged. The wing under iraraediate coramand of
Aristeus and the Corinthians, and other picked teoops around
him, put to flight the wing opposed to them, and pursued it a
considerable distance ; but the other part of the array, coraposed
of Potidaeans and Peloponnesians, was beaten by the Athenians,
and fled within the city wall.
LXIIL Returning frora his pursuit, Aristeus discerned the
defeat of this part of his array, and for a space was at a loss
whether he should run the hazard of retreating to Olynthus or
to Potidaea. The raore expedient course, however, seeraed to
him to contract his troops to the smaUest possible space, and to
force his way by running at full speed to Potidaea. According
ly, he marched along through the water around the projecting
end of the mole, exposed to a severe discharge of missiles, by
which he lost a few men, although he brought off the greater
nuraber. 2. When the battle began, and its signals were lifted
up, the troops stationed to aid the Potidaeans at Olynthus, which
is about sixty stadia distant, and conspicuously situated, ad
vanced a little way, as with a view to assist ; and the Mace
donian horse were drawn out and arranged to prevent thera ;
but victory declaring speedily for the Athenians, and the signals
of battle being lowered, they retired again within the walls, and
the Macedonians fell back on the Athenians ; so that the cavalry
of neither army assisted the infantry in the engagement. 3. The
Athenians then erected a trophy, and gave up the slain under
truce to the Potidaeans. Of these and their allies died a little
less than three hundred ; of the Athenians one hundred and
fifty, of whom was Callias, their commander.
LXIV. In pursuance of the plan of war, the Athenians next
proceeded to construct a wall of circumvallation around that
wall of Potidsea, which looked forth upon the main land, and

HOR^ THUCYDIDIAN.a:. 487
therein to place a garrison. The waU looking towards PaUene,
they did not immediately so inclose ; for they deemed them
selves unable to maintain a garrison upon the isthraus, and also
to pass through and construct a line of circuravallation towards
Pallene, apprehending that this separation of their array into
two disconnected divisions raight induce an attack of the Poti
daeans and their allies. 2. Hearing in Athens that no waU of
circuravaUation was built towards Pallene, the governraent,
sorae time afterwards, sent sixteen hundred heavy-arraed native
troops, under Phorraio, the son of Asopius, to the seat of war.
Arriving in the peninsula, and establishing his head-quarters at
Aphytis, he led his array towards Potidaea, advancing slowly and
wasting the countey before hira. No one sallying out to fight
hira, he built a wall of circuravallation on the side of Pallene ;
3. and thus Potidaea becarae closely besieged on both sides,
and was assailed also by the fleet frora the sea.
LXV. Thus walled in, and retaining no hope of safety, unless
something frora the Lacedaeraonians or sorae other accidental
circurastance should supervene, Aristeus advised that aU but
five hundred, waiting fair winds, should escape by sea, so that
their provisions raight hold out the longer, he hiraself preferring
to be one to reraain. This advice not being followed, as the next
best step to be taken, and with a view of giving the raost favor
able direction to operations elsewhere, he caused his whole force,
secretly and unobserved by the Athenian garrison of blockade,
to put to sea. 2. For sorae tirae he remained in Chalcidice,
and, besides other raUitary operations, he cut off great numbers
of the Sermylians, by planting an arabuscade about the city.
He took raeasures, also, by coraraunicating with the Pelopon
nesus, to obtain assistance frora that quarter. Phorraio, after
accomplishing the circuravaUation of Potidaea, at the head of
sixteen hundred men, visited Chalcidice and Bottice, and took
several towns.
LXVI. Thus, therefore, were these additional grounds of
reciprocal accusation induced upon the other difference between
the Peloponnesians and Athenians. The Corinthians had to
coraplain that the Athenians had besieged Potidaea, their colo
ny, and Corinthians and other Peloponnesians within it. The
Athenians, that the Peloponnesians had raoved an ally and trib
utary to revolt, and had openly sent thither an expedition and
fought for the Potidaeans. StiU war had not broken out, and
the truce subsisted, for thus far the Corinthians had acted alone.
LXVII. The siege of Potidaea, however, deterrained the
Corinthians to reraain inactive no longer, both because their
own troops were shut up within it, and because they feared for
its safety. Forthwith, therefore, they invited their allies to Lace-

488 TRANSLATIONS.
daemon, and going thither themselves, they veheraently in
veighed against the Athenians for breaking the truce, and for
doing injury to Peloponnesus. 2. The ^ginetans, too, al
though they openly sent no delegation, from fear of Athens,
yet in secret not less strenuously urged Lacedaemon to war,
aUeging that they were not permitted to be independent accord
ing to the spirit of the truce. 3. Whereupon the Lacedaemo
nians, having suraraoned their confederates, and all such others
as had aught of wrong to complain of against Athens, and hav
ing convoked their accustomed assembly, called upon thera to
speak. 4. Others thereupon preferred, each in succession, their
accusations against Athens, and among thera the Megareans,
who displayed nuraerous raatters of grievance, and particularly
that they were restrained from all intercourse of teade, both by
sea and land. 5. Last of all the Corinthians, having permitted
those who preceded thera to exasperate the Lacedaeraonians,
thus addressed thera.
LXVIII. " The good faith, Lacedaeraonians, which raarks
your own system and your own private life, inclines you to dis
believe a charge of bad faith, when made against others. It
is thus that you are distinguished by moderation and sobriety
of raind and policy, and yet labor always under a corresponding
misconception of the affairs of other States. 2. When we have
forewarned you, as frequently we have done, of injuries Athens
was about to inflict on us, you did not always derive the in
struction which you might have done from our representations,
but rather suspected us of speaking from private interests. The
consequence has been, that not in anticipation but under the
actual pressure of suffering have you assembled the allies.
Among these it is not unfit that we should have most to say,
since we have the weightiest charges to prefer, — charges of
outrage against Athens, of neglect against you. 3. If she had
prosecuted her policy of injury to Greece in a secret raanner, it
would be necessary to apprise you of it, as if ignorant of its ex
istence. But now, why consume tirae in enuraerating those
whom you yourselves see, sorae reduced to servitude, others
plotted against, and of these, araong the most prominent, our
own allies, herself all the while prepared beforehand for the war
which possibly you may resolve to hazard ? 4. For what else
but a design against the liberties of Greece, could have prompt
ed them secretly to withdraw and hold Corcyra from us, and to
lay siege to Potidaea — Potidaea, that post so erainently important
to secure you the use of your Thracian dominion, — Corcyra,
which could give Peloponnesus the largest navy ?
LXIX. " Of aU this the blame rests on you, in that you suf
fered them, after the Persian war, first to strengthen their city.

H;OR.aE THUCYDIDIANiE. 489
and then to construct the long walls ; and in that also you have
down to this raoment bereaved of Hberty, not those alone whom
they have reduced to servitude, but your own aUies. For not
be whose direct act reduces to servitude, but he who, able to
prevent it, does nothing, is author of the deed ; especially is he
so, who arrogates the praise of being hailed Uberator of Greece.
2. Even now we have raet tardily to act we see not on what.
For no longer ought we to be pondering whether we are sus
taining injury or not, but rather how to repel it. This moment
they are advancing, active, resolved, and undallying, upon you,
all undetermined what to do. 3. In what manner indeed, by
what gradual advance they assail others, we know. While they
suppose theraselves unobserved through your inattentiveness,
they are less audacious ; but when they discover that you know
and permit what they do, they will press on you vehemently.
Ye alone of all the Hellenes are quiet, repelling your enemy,
not by force but by being evermore about to resort to force, —
alone of all ye prefer to break down his doubled strength rather
than his incipient growth. 5. And yet ye used to be reckoned
worthy of all reliance, — a reputation which outwent the fact.
For it is within our own knowledge that the Mede advanced
firom the very ends of the earth into Peloponnesus, before you
went out to meet hira as becarae you. And now you look su
pinely upon the Athenians, not distant as he was, but at your
door, and instead of raarching upon thera, you prefer awaiting
to repel their attack on you, casting yourselves on the doubtful
chances of a war with an adversary grown far stronger than you.
And all this, although you are well aware that the barbarian
overthrew hiraself more than he was overthrown, and that any
advantages which we have gained over the Athenian, these we
have gained more by their blunders than by your help. Indeed
the hope of help firom you has wrought the ruin of sorae, unpre
pared because they trusted it. Let no one deera this the re
proach of enmity, but rather the remonstrance of friendship, for
remonstrance we address to a friend who mistakes, reproach to
an eneray who wrongs.
LXX. " Yet do we think that, if any ever raight, we may
coraplain of our neighbors, especiaUy since subjects of contro
versy so vast have arisen, which you seera to us very inade
quately to appreciate, and since you seem not to comprehend
who, what, how totally in all things unlike yourselves, are these
Athenians with whom you may have to contend. 2. They are
ever projectors of some novelty, quick to plan and to execute ;
you guard what you have, devise nothing new, and fail to ac
complish even that which is absolutely necessary. 3. They,
again, dare beyond their ability, incur risks unwarranted by a

490 TRANSLATIONS.
sound judgment, are full of hope in the midst of perils. Your
acts fall below your ability ; you trust not in the safest deter
minations of judgment; from peril you despair of ever being
extricated. 4. It is the strife of the ever-ready with the ever-
procrastinating, of the roamer abroad with the dweller at horae.
To leave their possessions, they think the way to enlarge thera.
You think to invade others, the way to lose what you have.
Victorious, they press on farther, and beaten, they despond less
than all other men. 5. Their bodies they squander for the state,
as if they were the bodies of other persons ; their best thoughts
they cultivate, as somewhat most cherished and personal, for
her. 6. If they fail to accomplish their whole plan of conquest,
they deem themselves robbed of their own ; if they succeed,
they consider that they have had the fortune to do little com
pared with what is left to do. Defeated in one enterprise, they
substitute for success, hope ; and to them alone, so proraptly do
they put their plans into execution, are fruition and expectation
the sarae. 7. Thus ever in labors and perils, do they wear out
life. Less than all others do they enjoy what they have, be
cause they are ever striving to acquire. For them to do what
ought to be done, is the only festival of life, and in their mind
repose, accoraplishing nothing, is as great an evU as occupation
the raost laborious. 8. So that one raight, in a word, justly
characterise thera as a race born neither to rest themselves, nor
to permit it to others.
LXXL " And yet, Lacedaeraonians, with such a State in array
against you, you hesitate. You do not consider that peace is
sure to be longest theirs who, while they practise what is right,
yet announce their deterraination to subrait to nothing wrong ;
but you do what is right with the policy and upon the princi
ple of neither inflicting injury on others, nor of being sub
jected to injury in resorting to self-defence. 2. This you could
scarcely effect, even if your next neighbor were guided by a pol
icy exactly the sarae; but now your system, as against such
as they, is obsolete. It is a law of human life that new policy,
like a last innovation in art, should ever triumph. 3. For a
State wholly still, unchanging custoras are best ; but for one
which is irapelled to much and various novelty of enterprise,
new arts of policy are indispensable. Hence, in Athens, prac
tised in a larger variety of national experience, all is newer
than with you. 4. Of all this procrastination, let this be the
end. Succor at once us and the Potidaeans by invading Attica;
them, lest you abandon friends and kindred to the eneray ; us,
lest you compel us in despair to seek other alliance. 5. In such
a measure we should be guilty of no crirae, neither in the sight
of the gods who enforce oaths, nor in that of raen who appre-

HORiE THUCYDIDIANiE. 49 1
ciate thera ; fQr it is not they who, deserted by their aUies, seek
new ones, but they who withhold assistance frora those to whora
they have sworn it, that are the breakers of truce. 6. But if
you wiU be prompt to help us, we remain with you. It were
unjust to change our connection, nor elsewhere could we find
those raore congenial to us. 7. Judge wisely, then, on these
things, and see to it that that supremacy in Peloponnesus
which you have inherited, you preserve unimpaired."
LXXII. Such was the discourse of the Corinthians. It hap
pened that there was at that moraent an erabassy of the Athe
nians in Sparta, which had been sent thither before for other
objects. Having ascertained what had been said, they judged
it" expedient to wait on the asserably of the Lacedaeraonians,
not for the purpose of answering to the accusations which the
cities had preferred, but to intimate in relation to the general
subject a caution not to decide rashly, but to weigh maturely.
They desired too to set forth the power of Athens, to remind
the old of what they knew, and to inforra the young of what
they did not, supposing that this would turn their hearts rather
to peace than to war. 2. Going, therefore, to the Lacedaemo
nians, they declared a wish to say soraewhat to the asserably,
unless it should he forbidden. 3. They directed them to enter ;
whereupon, having done so, they said, —
LXXIII. " The object of our embassy was not to make defence
against your aUies, but different and raore generaL Learning,
however, that a very veheraent outcry has been here raised against
us, we present ourselves, not to repel the accusation of the par
ties, for this were to try a cause before those neither our judges
nor their judges; but lest, persuaded by your allies, you should
adopt unwise counsels upon a subject of vast iraportance. We
have desired, too, in reference to the entire discourse which has
arraigned us, to demonsteate that what we possess we have
not unfairly acquired, and that Athens raay chaUenge a just
glory. 2. Of the reraote past, of which tradition, not your own
eyes, is the witness, why need we speak ? But of the Persian
war, and of the events which have passed under your own ob
servation, irksome though it is to us so often to display them,
we must say something. For what we then did was an achieve
ment of peril, effected for the general good. You shared that
good; let us be indulged, — whatever its value, — in a share of
the glory. We shall recall these things, too, not so much for
excuse and deprecation, as to reraind you with what manner of
city, if unwise counsels guide you, the contest must be. 4. We
aver, then, that at Marathon we foreraost and alone encountered
the peril of barbarian war. Invaded a second tirae, unable to
resist on land, we erabarked with our whole people on the sea,

492 TRANSLATIONS.
and fought his fleet at Salamis. The effect of that victory was to
hinder his ships frora successively attacking and destroying the
cities of the Peloponnesus, since against a naval force so over
whelraing, they could not have defended theraselves. 5. Of the
great results of that victory, he hiraself offered a proof the raost
signal ; for his fleet being defeated, appreciating the great diminu
tion and comparative inferiority of his force, at once, with raost
of his army, he retreated.
LXXIV. " To this great achievement, demonstrating that
Greece existed but in her navy, we contributed in three particu
lars raost effectively, — the largest number of ships, a com
mander the most consummate in capacity, and zeal the most
untiring. We furnished towards the whole fleet of four hun
dred sail a little less than two parts in three ; we furnished for
coraraander, Themistocles, who, more than all others, was in
strumental in bringing on the battle of Salamis, whose wisdora
saved Greece, whom you yourselves, for a service so teanscend-
ent, honored as you never honored a stranger guest before.
2. We displayed a zeal the raost daring, since on land, no one
helping us, every State as far as Athens submitting, we resolved
not to desert the cause of those allies who still remained to usj
to take no offence that you had not extended a prompter aid,
not to render ourselves useless by dispersing; but to embark
and dare the perils of naval war. 3. We boast, therefore, to
have conferred on you as much benefit as we have received.
You, fearing rather for yourselves than for us, — for before we
were attacked, you came not near us, — issued forth at length
to aid, from cities unwasted, — your cities, — to preserve them
for yourselves. We, sallying out from a city that had ceased
to exist, and perilling ourselves on a chance, only not desperate,
at once, in some real sense and raeasure, saved you and our
selves. But had we, in the first instance, from fear yielded, like
others, to the Persian, or had we not dared, as already ruined,
to embark, you could have fought no naval battle, for you had
no ships ; and all things would have quietly faUen into the exact
course which he desired.
LXXV. " Say, then, Lacedaemonians, considering the zeal
and the wisdom of the counsels with which we raet that day,
ought the erapire we have won to subject us to such a burden
of the envy of Greece ? 2. That erapire we did not grasp by
violence, but acquired it by your declining the prosecution of
the war against the barbarian to its close, and by the allies
coming to us and entreating us to permit thera to elevate us to
the command. 3. Once acquired, frora the nature of supremacy,
we were forced, in the first instance, to elevate it to its present
height, chiefly by reason of the jealousy of others ; in part, too,

HORiE THUCYDIDIAN^. 493
for our glory, in part for our profit. 4. It seemed unsafe that
we, odious to the greater number, (sorae of thera actually re
duced from open revolt — yourselves no longer friendly as at
first, but disteustful and at variance with us,) should risk the
hazards of resigning coramand ; for the revolters from us would
have gone to you. 5. Surely, it is no cause of reproach to any
to raeet with prudence the great crises of their affairs.
LXXVI. "Yourselves, Lacedaeraonians, having imposed upon
the States of Peloponnesus a polity to subserve your own inter
ests, rule them; and had you continued, as we did, to exercise
comraand, always odious, through and since the war, you, too,
would have becorae equally the object of hatred with the allies,
and would have been, as we are, obliged to govern with a firm
hand, or to subject yourselves to great peril. 2. We say, then,
we have done nothing so wonderful or so totally out of the
course of huraan action, in just accepting a supremacy which
was proffered to us, and in so far yielding to the transcendent
considerations of glory, fear, and advantage, as not to give it
away. Nor are we the originators of such a precedent, since
ever it was the decree that the weaker should be comraanded
by the steonger. Let us say, too, that we hold ourselves worthy
of this rule ; nor did you deera us not so, until now, when inter
est prompts you to begin to discourse of justice, — justice, no
love of which ever yet restrained the acquisitions of power."

42

TRANSLATION FROM TACITUS.

October, 1845.
I AM reading, meditating, and teanslating the first of Greek
historians, Thucydides. I study the Greek critically in Passow,
(LiddeU and Scott,) Bloomfield, Arnold, and Duker; and
the history in Mitford, Thirlwall, Wachsmuth, Herraann, &c.,
&c., and translate faithfully, yet with sorae attention to
EngUsh words and construction ; and ray purpose is to study
deeply the Greece of the age of Pericles, and all its warnings
to the liberty and the anti-unionisms of ray own country and
tirae. For purposes raore purely rhetorical, I would translate and
study Tacitus, too; and (soraewhat abruptly, for I am a little
way advanced in the study of his immortal work) begin with
the death of Germanicus. My helps are Ernesti, Lipsius,
Ruperti, and the common historians, Leverett's Dictionary, and
Murphy ; and ray object is an elegant, yet true and reserabUng
version, and a collection of rhetorical sentiments and phrases,
and of general wisdora. I begin October 9, 1845.
ANNALS. BOOK IL — CHAPTER 70.
These proceedings of Piso exasperated Germanicus as much
as they alarraed him. " If my threshold," he said, " is to be be-
seiged, if my blood is to be poured out under the eye of my
eneraies, what will befall ray raost wretched wife ; what ray
children, yet infants ? Piso thinks poison too slow I He hast
ens ; he presses eagerly onward that he may grasp the province
and the legions in his single hand. But he shall learn that
Germanicus is not yet wholly vanquished ; nor shall the mur
derer earn the reward of his crime of blood." He coraposed
letters to Piso, in which he renounced his friendship. Accord
ing fo the relation of raost writers, he added a coramand that
he should depart from the province. Without more delay Piso
set sail, yet proceeded slowly on his voyage that he might have
the less distance to return if the death of Gerraanicus should
open to him the gates of Syria.

TACITUS. 495
Ch. 71. Germanicus at first, for a brief space, was elevated to
the hope of recovery, but soon perceived that his end was ap
proaching ; and with wearied frame, thus addressed the friends
who stood around him : — " If I were yielding to a decree of na
ture, I might yet justly grieve for the ordination even of the gods
who snatch rae away frora parents, chUdren, country, by a pre
mature departure in my season of youth. But now, intercepted
violently and suddenly by the crime of Piso and Plancina, I
leave ray last prayers in your hearts. Tell my father and ray
brother by what afflictions torn asunder, by what treachery
circuravented, I closed ray raost unhappy life, and by the raost
inglorious death. If there are those in whora ray earlier hopes,
my kindred blood awakened an interest; if there are any in
whom, while living, I moved an emotion of envy, they will weep
that he, once shining the survivor of so raany wars, has fallen by
the fraud of woraan. There will be allowed you opportunity of
preferring a complaint to the senate, and of invoking the laws.
It is not fhe chief office of friendship to stand looking after the
departed with listless sorrow, but to reraeraber his wishes and
to perform his injunctions. Even strangers will weep for Ger
manicus. You wiU vindicate him, if it were hiraself rather
than his conspicuous fortune, which you loved and cherished.
Show to the people of Rorae the granddaughter of Augustus,
my wife; enuraerate ray six children. .Sympathy will enlist
itself with the accusers ; and they who raay only pretend that
their crimes were coraraanded by a higher will shaU not be
believed, or shall not be held guiltless." Taking the right
hand of the dying raan his friends swore that they would
sooner lose life than revenge.
Ch. 72. Then turning to his wife he entreated her by his
raeraory, by their common children, to suppress all vehemence
of resentment, to resign her spirit to her cruel fortune when
she should return to the city, to avoid by emulation of power
exasperating those above her in the State.
These dying injunctions Germanicus openly communicated.
Other things he confidentiaUy said, by which he was be
lieved to have conveyed a suspicion of Tiberius. Within a
brief space afterwards he died, to the profound sorrow of the
province and of the counteies around it. Foreign nations and
kings mourned for him. Such had been his courtesy to his
subjects of the province ; such his clemency towards enemies ;
such reverence did his countenance and his speech alike con
ciliate, that while he preserved and displayed the grandeur and
dignity of the highest estate, he escaped envy and the accusa
tion of arrogance.
Ch. 73. His funeral was celebrated not with statues nor

496 TRANSLATIONS.
with pomp, but by praises, and by the memory and rehearsal
of his virtues. Sorae there were who drew a parallel between
him in respect of forra and of age, the kind of bis death, the
general region in which he died, and the traits and fortune of
Alexander the Great. Each of thera it was called to raind
was of dignified and graceful person and iUustrious faraily,
and each, not rauch past the thirtieth year of life, died by
the treachery of his counteyraen in foreign lands. But Ger
raanicus was gentle towards his friends, teraperate in his pleas
ures, the husband of one wife, the father of legitimate children
only. Nor was he, they urged, less a wamor, although charac
terized by less rashness; and although he had been hindered
frora forcing the Gerraans, stunned by so raany victories, into
entire subjection. But had he been the sole disposer of affairs ;
if that field of war had belonged to hira in narae and of right,
he would have won the glory of arras with a promptness and
energy as rauch more conspicuous as was his superiority in
clemency, temperance, and all other moral traits. His body,
before it was burned, was exposed naked in the forura of An
tioch, which was the place assigned for funeral ceremonies.
Whether it revealed indications' of poison raay not certainly be
known, for observers drew opposite conclusions, accordingly as
they were influenced by sorrow for Gerraanicus and by suspi
cions previously taken up, or by partiality towards Piso.
Ch. 74. Ib then becarae the subject of consultation araong the
commanders of legions and such senators as were present, who
should be designated to the Government of Syria ; the clairas
of others not having been iraportunately urged, the corapetition
came to be between Vibius Marsus and Cneius Sentius ; it was
long debated which should obtain the post. Ultiraately, Marsus
yielded to Sentius, who was elder, and who contended for it
with the more persevering energy. At the request of Vitellius,
Veranius, and others who were now engaged in framing the
accusation and collecting the proofs of guilt as if against a
party whose name was already presented to the Prsetor for
criminal proceedings, the new governor sent to Rome a female
of the name of Martina, infamous in that province for her prac
tices of poisoning, and with whora Plancina had raaintained a
very marked intimacy.
Ch. 75. But Agrippina, although faint frora sorrow and sick
ness, yet unable to endure the delay of revenge, ascended the
fleet with the ashes of Geiraanicus and with her chUdren, at
tended by universal ccmmf- eration that a woraan, fhe highest
in nobility, but yesterday lhe wife of a most iUustrious mar
riage, accuslomed to be s^een, surrounded, thronged, admired,
and congraiulated, should now be bearing away the ashes

TACITUS. 497
of the dead in her bosom ; uncertain of revenge ; anxious for
herself; her exposure to fortune multiplied and heightened by
the sad possession of so many children.
Meantirae, tidings of the death of Germanicus overtook Piso
at the Island of Cos. In the transports of interaperate delight,
he sacrificed victims, and went for thanksgivings to the temple
of the gods. He made no effort to disguise or restrain his joy ;
and his wife, stiU more elated, then first changed her dress of
mourning for a lost sister, to garments of praise and gladness.
Ch. 76. Already were the centurions flowing in around him
and reminding hira that the preferences of the legions were de
cisive for him, and counselling that he should reacquire the pro
vince now without a chief, which had been unjustly wrested
away. Proceeding then to consult thera what he should do, his
son Marcus Piso declared his opinion to be that he should hasten
to the city ; that no inexpiable offence had yet been coramitted ;
that groundless suspicions, and the empty things of report were
not to be feared ; that fhe quarrel between him and Germanicus
might perhaps expose hira to odium but was not a subject of
punishraent ; that he had made expiation to his eneraies by the
deprivation of his province. But that if he returned to Syria
and Sentius should oppose hira, a civil war is instantly begun,
nor would the centurions and soldiers remain faithful to his
cause, since with them the fresh memory of their late com
mander and the profound attachment to the Caesars with which
they were peneteated would prove a more powerful influence.
Ch. 77. In opposition to this, Doraitius Celer, who shared
his raost intiraate friendship, argued that he should grasp the
contingency. " It is Piso," said he, " not Sentius, who is in
trusted with Syria. To hira are coraraitted the fasces and the
pretorian jurisdiction ; to hira the legions. If anything of war
should violently assail hira, with how much raore justice could
he resist, who had received the authority, and the appropriate
orders of a governor of the province ? Besides, tirae should be
given to reports, that they may grow old. With a recent odium,
the contest of our innocence is unequal. If he should retain the
army and increase his power chance might be relied on for
unexpected aid. Shall we rush to Rorae, attending the yery
ashes of Germanicus, that the passionate grief of Agrippina,
the violence of an ignorant mob, may hurry you, in the first
excitation of slanderous report to death, unheard, undefended ?
With you is Augusta privy, accessorial to the deed ; with
you is the favor of Caesar, but secretly both. And none will
more ostentatiously mourn that Germanicus is dead, than those
who most rejoice."
Ch. 78. Piso, ever inclined to daring action, was with no
42*

498 TRANSLATIONS.
great difficulty drawn into this opinion, and addressed letters
to Tiberius accusing Gerraanicus Of arrogance and luxurious-
ness, and setting forth that hiraself, who had been expelled
frora the province the raoment an opportunity of rebeUion
had opened, had resumed the comraand of the array nnder the
influence of the sarae sentiraents of loyalty with which he had
originally held it. At the sarae tirae, he placed Doraitius in
coraraand of a trireme ; and gave hira orders to saU for Syria,
keeping clear of the coasts on the outside of the Islands. He
forraed the deserters, who flocked to him, into corps, he arraed
the sutlers, and crossing to the continent with his fleet, he
intercepted and retained a body of recruits marching to Syria.
He wrote to the petty chiefs of Cilicia to assist him. His son
Piso, although he had dissuaded from undertaking the war,
approved himself full of energy for its service.
Ch. 79. Setting out for Syria they raet, as they passed the
coast of Lycia and Paraphilia, the ships which bore Agrippina;
and kindled with hostile sentiraents, both sides prepared their
weapons for battle ; but restrained by reciprocal fear they did
not pass the lirait of reproaches. Vibius Marsus gave notice
to Piso to corae to Rorae to stand his trial, to which Piso
replied with a sneer, that he would be sure to do so the rao
raent the Praetor, who holds pleas of poisonings, should assign
a day for accuser and accused. Meantirae, Doraitius having
arrived at Laodicea, proceeded to the winter quarters of the
sixth legion, which he supposed would be, more than any
other, particularly well disposed to new policy and action, but
found himself anticipated and baffled by Pacuvius. This at
terapt and its result, Sentius exposed by letters to Piso, and
adraonished not to assail the carap by corruption, nor the pro
vince by war. He proceeded to draw together those whora he
had observed to love the raeraory of Gerraanicus, or to be the
eneraies of his enemies, all the while throwing out intiraations
of the power of the eraperor, and that the State was assailed
by arras, and at length placed himself at the head of a power
ful body of troops prepared for battle.
Ch. 80. Nor did Piso, although his enterprise was beginning
to approach a result other than he had hoped, fail to adopt
measures — the safest in the actual exigency. He took raili
tary occupation of a castle in Cilicia, strongly fortified, of the
name of Celendris, for he had raixed together deserters, the
new recruits which he had recently intercepted, his own
and Plancina's servants, and the levies sent by the chiefs of
Cilicia, and had disposed them into the organized forms and
nurabers of a legion. He asseverated that he, the deputy of
Caesar, was expelled frora the province which the emperor had

TACITUS. 499
given to him, not by the legions, for upon their caU he had
come, but by Sentius, cloaking private raalice under false
accusation of public crime. He asked them only to form and
stand in array of battle ; for the soldiers would not fight, he
urged, when they should perceive that Piso, whom once they
had held as parent, in a contest of right was the stronger, and
in a contest of arms was not weak. He then displayed his
companies in front of the fortified points of the castle, upon a
steep and broken hiU — for all places were girt by the sea.
Against these stood the veterans, drawn up in ranks and
with reserves. On one side was the courage and discipline
of soldiers, on the other advantage of position — but without
bravery, without hope, with no weapons even but rustic instru
ments of annoyance snatched up on a sudden emergency.
When forces so imperfectly matched came to blows, the contest
was doubtful only while the Roraan cohorts were struggling to
ascend to the equal and level ground on which the enemy was
posted. The instant that was accomplished the Cilicians turned
their backs and shut themselves up in the castie.
BOOK in.
Ch. 1. Undelayed by a winter's sea, Agrippina pursues her
voyage, and is borne to the island of Corcyra, opposite to the
Calabrian shore. There, violent by grief, and untaught and un
knowing how to endure, she passed a few days in a struggle to
corapose herself. Meantirae the news of her approach having
preceded her, the more intimate of the friends of Germanicus
and the greater number of those who had borne military office
under him, and crowds of persons unknown, some of whora sup
posed they were performing acceptable duty to the prince, while
the larger part implicitly followed them, rushed to Brundusium,
the nearest port and the safest harbor to which she raight corae.
And now that the fleet is first dimly discerned far at sea, the
harbor, and aU the adjacent shore nearest the water, and not
these alone but waUs, and roofs of houses, even the reraotest,
fi-ora which a glirapse could be gained, are thronged by a vast
and sorrowing raultitude. They inquire often, one of another,
whether they shall receive her as she descends from her ship,
with silence, or with any uttered expression of feeUng ? Nor
had they determined which would most befit the time, when
the fleet slowly entered the port, not gliding to that joyful
stroke of the oar with which the sailor, his voyage ending,
coraes to land, but with the raanner in all things and with the
aspects of a procession of raourning. And when Agrippina
with her two children, bearing the urn of the dead, had de-

500 TRANSLATIONS.
scended frora the ship and fixed her eyes sadly on the ground,
one general equal sob burst forth frora all that vast raultitude,
nor could you distinguish by the degree or the forra of sorrow,
strangers frora near friends, nor raan from woman ; except that
those in the train of Agrippina, exhausted by long-indulged
grief, were less passionate and vehement than those more recent
in their expression of it who thus came forth to meet them.
Ch. 2. The Emperor had sent two Praetorian cohorts to at
tend the arrival and approach of Agrippina, and had also issued
a decree that the Apulians, the Carapanians, and the magistrates
of Calabria should perforra the last offices to the raeraory of his
son. The ashes therefore were borne forward upon the shoul
ders of tribunes and centurions ; before thera there raoved
along standards undecorated, and fasces inverted ; and as the
procession passed through successive colonies, the people clad
in black, and the Equites in their robes of state, as the raeans
of the region might supply, burned garments, odors, and such
things else as use to honor the burial of the dead. Even they
whose cities the procession did not pass through, came out to
meet it, and offering sacrifices, and erecting altars to the gods
of the dead, attested their sorrow by tears and united wailing.
Drusus had advanced as far as Terracina with his brother
Claudius, and with those children of Germanicus who had re
mained at Rome. The consuls Marcus Valerius and Caius
Aurelius (for they now exercised that raagistracy), the Senate
and the great body of the people thronged the way ; without
order of procession or arrangeraent, each man by himself weep
ing unrestrained — the sorrow of the heart — not the service of
adulation — since all knew well that the joy of the Eraperor for
the death of Gerraanicus was scarcely veiled by the decencies .
of dissiraulation.
Ch. 3. Tiberius and Augusta secluded theraselves frora the
public eye ; either deeraing it beneath the imperial majesty
openly to mourn ; or fearing that the universal gaze might dis
cern in their countenances the insincerity of their hearts. I do
not find in any historian, nor in the public journals of daily
events, that the mother of Gerraanicus performed any conspic
uous part in the service of the day ; while besides Agrippina,
Drusus and Claudius, the names of many other kinsraen of the
deceased are recorded. Whether she were prevented by iU
health, or, overcome by grief, could not endure to look upon
that spectacle of so great calamity, we raay not know. I
should raore easily beUeve, that she was detained at horae by
Tiberius and Augusta, who went not forth themselves, to the
end that each raight seem overwhelraed with a sirailar sorrow,
and that they raight seera to have been kept within by her
example.

TACITUS. 501
Ch. 4. On the day on which the reraains were borne to the
torab of Augustus, there reigned at tiraes a desolate silence, and
at times it was disturbed by sounds of sorrow. The streets were
filled ; funereal torches glearaed in the Campus Martius ; and
there were soldiers in arras ; there were raagistrates without the
badges of office ; the people by tribes ; and frora all lips there
burst forth the frequent cry so unrestrained, and loud, that they
raight seem to have forgotten that they had a master — "the
Republic is fallen — there is no raore hope." Nothing however
more deeply peneteated Tiberius, than the enthusiastic senti
ments which appeared kindled towards Agrippina. All saluted
her as the grace ofthe State; the one in whose veins alpne ran
the blood of Augustus ; the sole surviving speciraen of the old,
noble, Roraan raatronage ; and Ufting their eyes towards heaven
they prayed that her chUdren might be happy, and raight be
•spared the raalice of their eneraies.
Ch. 5. Some there were who deraanded the porap of a public
funeral, and contrasted with these services, the honors and the
magnificence with which Augustus had observed the burial of
Drusus, the father of Gerraanicus, reraembering how the Em
peror himself in the severest of winter, had advanced as far as
the Ticinus, and never leaving the dead, had entered the city
with it; how the statues of the Claudii and Livii encora
passed the bier ; how the dead was wept in the Forura, and
praised before the rostra; how all "the ancient and all the late
funeral honors were accumulated upon him. But Germanicus ¦
has not received the coramon ceremonies of burial, and such'
as were due to every noble Roraan. Properly enough perhaps
by reason of the distance of his place of death frora Rorae,
his body was burned in sorae raanner, in a foreign land. But
so much the more splendid and careful ought the later ob
servances to be, since fortune had denied him the earlier.
Instead, not his own brothers advanced more than a day's jour
ney to meet the dead ; nor his uncle even as far as the gate !
Where were the custoras of their fathers ; the image of the
dead exposed upon the bier ; verse composed in raemory of his
virtues ; eulogy and tears, or at least the shows of sorrow ?
Ch. 6. The general feeling was discerned by Tiberius, and, in
order to silence the speech of people, he put forth an admonitory
edict. " Many illustrious Romans," it bore, " had died for the
Republic ; but the funeral of no one had been solemnized by so
passionate a public sorrow. This was creditable to the Empe
ror and to all, if it were subraitted to some degree of modera
tion, for that excess of sorrow which raight become an humble
house or an inconsiderable city, were unsuitable to Princes
and an imperial people. For recent affliction, sorrow, and the

502 TRANSLATIONS.
solaces of grief indulged, were fit ; but now, at length, the mind
ought to be brought back to firmness again ; as once Julius, be
reaved of his only daughter ; as Augustus, his grandsons torn
frora hira, suppressed aU signs of gloora. Nor is there need
of reraembering earlier examples ; how often, with constancy,
has the Roraan people borne the slaughter of armies ; the death
of generals. Noble farailies, from their foundations, over
thrown and perished. Great raen die. The RepubUc is eter
nal. Let Rome then return to its duties, and referring to the
spectacle of the Megalesian garaes just now at hand, resurae
its pleasures."
Ch. 7. The vacation of raourning having been closed, Rorae
returned to its labors : Drusus proceeded to resume the com
mand of the Illyrian array, foUowed by the universal hope that
expiation would be exacted frora Piso, and by a general or fre
quent coraplaint that " lounging at his leisure through the beau
tiful Asia and Achaia, by an arrogant and fraudulent delay he
was gradually suppressing the proofs of his guilt." For it was
a current rumor that Martina, infamous for her poisons, who had
been sent towards Rorae, as I have related, by Cneius Sentius,
had died suddenly at Brundusiura, that poison had been found
hidden in a ringlet of her hair, and that no other appearance of
self-implicated death was detected on her.
Ch. 8. But Piso, having just sent forward his son to Rome,
with messages by which he raight soften the Prince, hiraself
goes to Drusus, whora he hoped to find less exasperated by a
brother's death, than reconciled or kinder by the removal of a
competitor. Tiberius, that he might give assurance of an ira
partial and undisturbed judgraent, received the young man
kindly, and enriched him by the Uberality which he usually
displayed to the sons of the noble. To Piso Drusus said, that
if those things were teue which rumor spread abroad, he should
occupy the chief place in the sorrow of the tirae. But he added
that he would prefer that they should prove false and vain,
and that the death of Gerraanicus should involve fatal results
to no one. This he said openly, shunning with care all conceal
ment ; and there is no doubt that he, who on other occasions
had seemed an artless facile youth, had now been counselled
beforehand by Tiberius to employ these arts of age.
Ch. 9. Piso having crossed the Dalmatian ^sea, and left his
fleet at Ancona, passing through Picenum and then over the Fla-
rainian way, came up with the legion, which was then on its
march frora Pannonia to the city, thence to be sent to garrison
in Africa ; and it became the subject of rumor that, on the
march and among the troops, he took much pains to present
himself frequently before the eyes of the soldiers. From Narnia,

TACITUS. 503
either to avoid the suspicion of designs on the teoops, or because
the plans of the fearful are wont to be undecided and changing,
he descended on the Nar, and on the Tiber. Even so he height- '
ened the exasperation of the populace by landing at the torab of
the Caesars in the daytirae, a multitude looking on, and by
walking towards the city, himself and Plancina, their counte
nances fuU of cheerfulness ; he surrounded by a throng of
clients, she by a teain of women. To all other stimulants of
the popular hatred was added this, — that his house which over
looked the Forum, stood wreathed with laurel, and illuminated;
a banquet spread in it, and full of guests, the conspicuousness
of the place exposing all things to view.
Ch. 10. The next day Fulcinius Trio accused Piso to the
Consuls. Against this proceeding ViteUius and Veranius and
others, who had attended Germanicus, insisted tbat no part
of the function of prosecution belonged to Trio ; that they
themselves did not appear as accusers, but that in obedience
to the injunction of Germanicus they had come to disclose and
to bear witness. Resigning all participation in that cause.
Trio obtained the right of arraigning the forraer life of Piso,
and a request was preferred to the Prince that he would himself
assume jurisdiction of that matter. To this not even the ac
cused raade objection, for he feared the anxious desires of the
people and Senate to convict him ; and, on.the other hand, he
believed Tiberius to be firra to despise ruraor, and to be also,
to sorae extent, a sharer of his mother's knovvledge of the
deed ; that a single judge could raore surely discrirainate be
tween the teue and the false exaggerated ; while hatred and envy
would sway a nuraerous tribunal. Tiberius did not miscon
ceive the great responsibilities of such a teial, nor the unfavor
able suspicions by which he was assaUed. CaUing together
therefore a few friends for witnesses, he just heard the threats
of the accusers and the appeal of the accused, and then remit
ted the whole cause untried, to the Senate.
Ch. 11. Meantirae Drusus returning from Illyricura, although
the Senate had decreed hira an ovation for recapturing Maro-
boduus, and for his achieveraents of the former sumraer, post
poned that honor and entered the city. For counsel, after Ti
tus, Arruntius, Fulcinius, Asinius Gallus, ^serninus MarceUus,
and Sextus Pompeius, whom he had soUcited to defend him, had
on various grounds excused themselves, the accused was at
tended by Lepidus, Piso, and Regulus. The whole city was kin
dled with expectation, wondering what trust there might be in
the friends of Germanicus ; what degree of confidence Piso cher
ished; whether Tiberius would completely suppress and hide
his thoughts. Engrossed, more than even before, with these sub-

504 TRANSLATIONS.
jects of anxious interest and speculation, the universal people
indulged themselves more than ever before, in confidential
speech, or ominous silence against the Prince.
Ch. 12. On the assembling ofthe Senate, Caesar pronounced
a discourse of studied moderation. Piso, he said, had been a
friend and one of the lieutenants of his father, and had by him,
with approbation of the Senate, been given to Gerraanicus, to
assist in the administration of the East. Whether there he had
wounded the sensibilities of the young man by insolence and
contentious rivalry, and had rejoiced at his death, or whether he
had murdered hira, the Senate, with irapartial raind, was to dis
criminate. " For if, in his capacity of lieutenant, he has gone
beyond the proper limit of official duty; if he has manifested
want of respectful devotedness to his coraraander; if he has
been found rejoicing at his death, and at my grief — I should
loathe hira indeed; I should banish hira from my house; and
thus — and not by an exertion of the high power of the Prince
— should I punish these quarrels of individuals. But if a crime
is developed, deserving to be avenged by the death of any hu
man being, I exhort you to soothe the children of Germanicus,
and us his parents, by the consolations to which we are entitied.
You will consider, too," he continued, " whether Piso did exercise
his military trust in a mutinous and seditious raanner; whether
he took arraed occupation of a province, and frora raotives of
arabition cultivated the attachraent of the troops; or whether
exaggerations and falsehoods in relation to these matters have
been spread abroad by his accusers, with whose excess of un
friendly zeal I ara justly incensed. For, what proper purpose
could it subserve to lay bare that body of the dead ; to give it
to be gazed on by vulgar eyes ; to send out the rumor, even
through foreign nations, that he had been slain by poison, if all
were yet unascertained and requiring to be investigated ? I mourn,
and shall ever mourn my son ; but I neither prohibit the accused
from producing all proofs by w^hich his innocence raay be raised
to light ; nor any evidence by which the crirae of Germanicus, if
such there were, may be established ; and, I enteeat you, not to
receive accusation for crirae merely because the inquiry is in
volved with ray personal griefs. If kindred blood, or if friendship
have induced these to become his advocates, let them aid the
accused in his perU by the utmost exertion of fidelity and elo
quence. To the same effort and the same fidelity let me urge
the prosecutors also. This ouly we have granted to Germanicus
beyond the law ; that in the Curia instead of the Forum ; by the
Senate instead of the judge, the question of his death ^aU be
tried. In all things else let there be as absolute a deference to
the general law, as if the case of a private citizen were on

TACITUS.

505

teial. Let no one regard the tears of Drusus ; let no one re
gard my grief; let no one regard those other sentiraents which
false ruraors have iraputed to rae."
Ch. 13. Two days were then assigned for presenting and
proving the charges; and then it was ordered that after an
interval of six days, three should be conceded to the defence.
At the time ordained, Fulcinius began by accusing hira that
he had displayed ambition and avarice in his administration of
Spain — a stale and unimportant charge — on which conviction
would not harm hira if he answered the new one ; frora which,
acquittal would not save him if he were convicted of the graver
crimes. After him, Servaeus, Veranius, and Vitellius, with
equal earnestness of e(ffort, but ViteUius, with far superior elo
quence, maintained that through hateed of Gerraanicus and
purpose of revolution, he had by Ucense and wrong of the aUies,
so debauched the coraraon soldiers, that the worst of them be
stowed on him the appeUation of father of the legion ; that, on
the other hand, he had shown great cruelty against every one of
the best, and particularly against the attendants and friends of
Germanicus ; that he had at length desteoyed him by poison and
by sorcery; that for this purpose were designed those accursed
sacrificial rites and preparations of Piso and Plancina ; that he
had assaUed the RepubUc by arras ; and that before the criminal
could be subjected to prosecution, it had been necessary first
to conquer hira in battle.
Ch. 14. The defence, against all charges but that of poison,
was tiraorous and incoraplete ; for his railitary ambition, and
his exposures of the Prince to the plunder of the most rapacious
of his force, and his insolence to his coraraander, could not be
denied. The charge of poisoning alone, he seems to have re
jected. Indeed, his accusers scarcely in the first instance made
it sufficiently probable ; for they assuraed the ground that at an
entertainment given him by Gerraanicus, as Piso reclined above
Gerraanicus, he with his own hands poisoned the meats ; whereas,
it seeraed absurd, that, surrounded by another's servants, under
the eye of so raany standing near, in the very presence of Ger
manicus, he should have attempted such an act. Besides this
improbability, the accused offered to subject his own servants
to the question by torture, and demanded that those of Ger
manicus should be so too. For various reasons his judges were
inexorable: Csesar, for the war made upon the province; the
senate, from the belief that Germanicus could not have died
without unfair raeans. All the tirae, too, the cries of the people
in front of the Curia were heard, exclaiming, " that their hands
should not spare him if he escaped conviction by the senate."
Already they had dragged the statues of Piso to the Gemonian
VOL. II. 43

506 TRANSLATIONS.
stairs, and would have dashed them in pieces had they not been
by comraand of the Prince, protected and restored to their places.
The prisoner was therefore put upon a litter, and conveyed forth
by a tribune of the PrEetorian cohort — a raurraur of doubt
and of divided opinion running through the multitude, whether
it were a guard or an executioner who attended him.
Ch. 15. Towards Plancina there was the same popular odiura,
but greater favor of the court ; so that it was felt to be uncertain
to what exteeraity the Prince would permit the proceedings
against her to go. She herself, while Piso's prospects were yet
doubtful, with an equal chance of acquittal or conviction, would
promise that she would share his fortune whatever it were ; and
if such were the issue, would be partaker of his death. As
soon, however, as through the secret intercession of Augusta
she had obtained pardon, she began by degrees to separate her
self fi-om her husband, and to conduct her defence upon a dis
tinct policy. The accused perceived that this inferred his ruin,
and doubted whether he should steuggle further. Urged by his
sons, however, he nerved himself, and again entered the senate,
and although he encountered renewed accusation, the hostile
speeches of Senators, and all things adverse and stern, he was
alarmed by nothing so much as to see Tiberius without pity,
without anger, unmoved and close ; so that no species of erao
tion raight break forth. Having been borne again to his house,
as if for the purpose of meditating his defence for the next
day, he wrote a few lines, sealed thera, and delivered thera to
his freedraan. He then bathed, and bestowed the other accus
tomed cares upon his person. When his wife, at a late hour,
left his charaber, he ordered the doors to be closed ; and at day
light was found with his throat pierced through, his sword lying
on the ground.
Ch. 16. I reraember to have heard, from ancient raen, that
there was more than once seen in the hands of Piso, a little
volume, which he hiraself did not make public ; but that his
fi-iends ever persisted in repeating that it contained letters of
Tiberius, and insteuctions against Germanicus; and that he
had determined to produce it in the senate, and arraign the
Prince on it if he had not been overreached by the deceitful
assurances of Sejanus ; and further, that he did not die by his
own hand but was slain by an assassin, who was sent in for
that purpose. The truth of either of these representations I
may not assert; yet ought I not to conceal that they were
made by old men, who were still alive down to the age of my
youth. Composing his features to an expression of sorrow,
Tiberius coraplained that odium was sought to be cast on
himself by such a mode of death, and endeavored to learn, by

TACITUS. 507
numerous inquiries, how Piso had passed his last day and
night of life. To some of these inquiries his son answered dis
creetly, to others less so. Tiberius took and read aloud the
last letter of Piso, coraposed in nearly these terras : —
" Borne down by a conspiracy of enemies, and the odium of
a false charge — truth and innocence no longer availing me — I
caU the immortal gods to witness, Casar, that my whole life
has been raarked by my fidelity towards you, and an equal piety
towards your mother. I beseech you, protect ray children.
Cneius had no share in ray fortunes, whatever they were, since
his whole time was passed in the city, and Marcus urgently dis
suaded me from reacquiring Syria. Oh, had I yielded to my
young son — not he to his aged father ! For this I the more
earnestly enteeat, lest he, >who is innocent, shall be doomed to
expiate ray guUt. By my long series of loyal services, extending
through five-and-forty years ; by our united c<rasular office ; I,
once the cherished friend of Augustus, your father — once yours
also ; I, who shall never ask you more — ask the safety of my
unhappy son." Of Plancina, he said nothing.
Ch. 17. After listening to this, Tiberius absolved the young
man firom the crirae of the civil war. A son, he said, could
not disobey the orders of a father ; nor could he hiraself re
fuse a sentiment of compassionate regard for the dignity of
the house, and for the fate of Piso hiraself, however deserved.
On behalf of Plancina, he discoursed too ; but with an air as
of sharae and self-disgrace ^ pleading the prayers of his mo
ther in her behalf. Against her, however, the secret complain
ings of all the best of men were increasing every moraent.
" Was it just," they said, " that a grandraother should favor
 should hold intercourse of speech with — should snatch from
the jurisdiction of the senate the murderess of her grandson ?
Should that which the laws exact for aU Romans be denied to
Gerraanicus ? Behold a Caesar wept by ViteUius and Veranius,
and Plancina defended by the Prince and by Augusta ! What
hinders that she turn her poisons and all her arts of death, so
felicitously tested, upon Agrippina and her chUdren, and glut
so exceUent a grandraother, and glut the uncle, with the blood
of a whole most unhappy house " ?
Upon the whole cause two days were consumed in the forms
of judicial trial, the Prince urging the children of Piso to save
their mother. And when the prosecutor and the witnesses had
sumraed up the accusation with their most emulous exertion of
ability, and no one repUed a word, corapassion, rather than
hate, was heightened. Aurelius Cotta, the consul, being first
asked his opinion — for, upon the proposition of C^sar, raagis-
teates performed that function also — thus declared it ; " thatthe

508 TRANSLATIONS.
narae of Piso be erased frora the public chronicles ; that part of
his estates be confiscated ; that part should be bestowed on his
son Cneius Piso ; and that he should change his praenoraen ;
that Marcus Piso should be unclothed of his senatorial dignity,
and, with a provision of -fifty thousand great sesterces, sent into
exile for ten years ; that Plancina should be spared to the
prayers of Augusta."
Ch. 18. The severity of this judgraent was in many particulars
mitigated by the Emperor. Let not, he said, the name of Piso
be erased from the public registers, since that of Marcus An
tonius, who had borne arras against his countey, and that of
Julius Antonius, who had violated the house of Augustus, had
been permitted to remain. Marcus Piso, too, he spared the
degradation which had been advised, and gave hira the whole
of his father's estate. Ever, as I have often related, he was
sufficiently unraoved by the temptation of wealth, and he was
now the more inclined to raercy from the sense of shame that
Plancina had been absolved. When, also, Valerius Messalinus
proposed that a golden statue of Mars, the avenger, should be
set up in the Temple of Mars, and Caecina Severus, that an
altar should be built to revenge, the Prince prohibited it, and
said that for victory over a foreign foe such offerings might
appropriately be dedicated ; that internal evUs should be covered
over with a silent grief.
Messalinus had added advice that to Tiberius and Augusta,
and to Antonia, Agrippina, and Drusus, should be de
creed thanks for the revenging of Gerraanicus, and had
oraitted the mention of Claudius. Lucius Asprenas, in pres
ence of the senate, inquired of Messalinus if it were prudent
to pass by that name ? Then, at length, it was added to this
proposition. To me, the wider the survey which I take of the events of
older or more recent times, the more do the jests of huraan life,
turning its soleran things to derision and laughter, display
theraselves ; for, surely, all men might seem to have been des
tined by fame, by hope, by veneration, to the throne, rather than
he whom fortune was secretly cherishing for the future Prince.
Ch. 19. A few days afterwards, Caesar procured a decree of
the senate, bestowing the office of priest upon ViteUius, Vera
nius, and Servaeus. To Fulcinius he promised his vote for
public honors; yet gave him a hint that he should hold the
irapetuosity of his eloquence under raore resteaint. And thus
ended the proceedings which sought to punish the death of
Germanicus. That event is a subject on which a great diver
sity of conjecture existed both araong the actors in that time
and subsequentiy. All things are shaded in uncertainty, since

TACITUS. 509
some believe and report all which they hear, others record
falsely, and the original error enlarges with the course of tirae.
Drusus, who had lost his raiUtary coraraand by entering the
city, now retired to entitle hiraself to resurae it, and then
returned with the honors of ovation. A few days afterwards
died Vipsania, his raother. She alone, of aU the children of
Agrippa, enjoyed the blessing of a peaceful death. Of the
rest, some are known to have perished by the sword, and
others are believed to have perished by poison or want.
Ch. 20. In the same year, Tacfarinas, who, during the sura
mer before, as I have related, had been expelled from the coun
tey by Camillus, recommenced war in Africa. He began by
predatory incursions, now here, now there, which his celerity
of raovement made it impracticable to punish. Soon he ad
vanced to the sack and destruction of whole vUlages ; he began
to carry off large and valuable booty ; and at length, not far
firom the river Pagida, he inclosed a Roman legion. Decrius
commanded in the camp ; a prompt and experienced officer ;
and he regarded this siege itself a disgrace. Exhorting his sol
diers, therefore, to court an opportunity of battle in the open
fields, he formed his line in front of the carap. In the first shock
the legion gave way. With great gallantry, he threw hiraself
in the way of his flying troops, amid a shower of arrows ; he '
reproached the standard-bearers that a Roman soldier should
show his back to a rabble of undisciplined barbarians and de
serters. Wounded, his eye pierced through, he still sternly turned
his face on the enemy, and continued to fight until, deserted by
his soldiers, he feU, slain, upon the field.
Ch. 21. When these events became known to Apronius, who
succeeded to CamiUus, alarraed rather by the disgrace attached to
his own troops than by the farae won by the eneray, he resorted
to that extrerae raeasure of the old tiraes, then become almost
disused, a decimation ; causing every tenth raan in the dishon
ored legion, drawn by lot, to be beaten to death. Such was the
effect of this severity, that when the same force of Tacfarinas
attacked the post called Thala, a single banner of Roman sol
diers, not exceeding five hundred in nuraber, repulsed and routed
them. In this action a comraon soldier, Rufus Helvius, won
the glory of saving the life of a citizen, and was presented by
Apronius with chains and a spear. Caesar added the civic
crown, gently coraplaining, but not offended, that Apronius had
not given that also, by virtue of his authority as proconsul.
Discerning that his Numidians were smitten with terror, and
refused to try again the hazards of attempting a siege, Tacfari
nas broke up the war into sudden and dispersed attacks, retiring
when pursued, and then coming back upon the enemies' rear;
43*

510 TRANSLATIONS.
and whUe the barbarians adhered to this policy, he kept mock
ing with impunity the baffled and wearied Roman army. After,
however, he had directed his incursions towards places on the
sea, becoraing incumbered with plunder, he risked a more per
manent encarapraent ; and then Apronius Cesianus, detached
by his father with a force of cavalry and auxiliary cohorts, and
a selection of the fleetest teoops from the legions, defeated him
and drove him into the desert.
Ch. 22. During these events in Africa, Lepida, araong whose
ancestry, over and above the glory of ^railian descent, were
Pompey and Sylla, was accused of crime at Rorae. She was
accused of having feigned to have borne a child to her husband,
PubUus Quirinus, a rich and childless raan ; of adultery ; of
poisonings ; of having consulted soothsayers concerning the
house of the Prince. Manius Lepidus, her brother, conducted
her defence. PubUus Quirinus, by his vindictiveness, uninter
rupted after he had declared his divorce, excited corapassion for
her, however infamous and guilty. In that trial one could with
difficulty divine the great wiU of the Prince, so did he vary and
confound all signs of anger and of clemency. First, he besought
the senate not to tey the treasonable ingredients of the charge
at "all, but presently himself drew out some of consular rank,
and other witnesses, to reveal the very matter which he had
seeraed to wish to suppress. The servants of Lepida, who were
held in railitary custody, he transferred to the charge of the
consuls ; and he would not perrait them to be exarained by the
torture, respecting the accusations of design against his house.
He excused, too, his son Drusus, the designated consul of the
next year, from the duty of first declaring his opinion. This
was atteibuted by sorae to kindness towards the accused ; that
those who should subsequently declare their opinions raight be
spared the necessity of assentation, and thus inferred frora it a
sentiment and purpose of unkindness — for why should he, they
reasoned, yield the first place unless it were to be first in the
work of condemnation ?
Ch. 23. On the days of the games which intervened during
the trial, Lepida entered the theatre attended by noble women,
and there with the most passionate sorrow invoked her ances
tors — invoked Pompey himself — whose monuraents and whose
statues rise around in view. Moved by compassion, aU who
beheld her melted into tears, and began to denounce Quirinus
in terms most bitter and contemptuous — the cruel and detest
able conduct of him to whose old age, and chUdlessness, and
obscurity of family, had been sacrificed the destined wife of
Lucius Csesar, the destined wife of the grandson of Augustus."
Subsequently, however, crime was revealed . against her by

TACITUS. 511
the torture of servants ; and upon the motion of RubeUius Blan-
dus she was sentenced to prohibition of fire and water. To
this motion Drusus assented ; although many others had voted
for one less extreme. Eventually, the indulgence was extended
to Scaurus, her former husband, and to whora she had borne a
daughter, that her estates should not be confiscated. When
the proceedings were closed, Tiberius raade it known that he
had detected, by exaraination of the servants of Quirinus, that
she had by poison sought his own life.
Ch. 24. These reiterated misfortunes of illustrious houses, —
for within a brief space the Calpurnian had lost Piso, and the
.^milian, Lepida, — were aUeviated by the restoration of Decius
SUanus to the JuUan faraUy. Let rae in few words relate his
case frora the beginning.
The public fortunes of Augustus were felicitous ; but bis
domestic life was darkened by the licentiousness of his daugh
ter and granddaughter. He banished them from the city, and
punished their paramours with exile or death ; for by bestowing
on a crime, itself frequent, the grave denomination of dishonor
to religion, and of violated majesty, of sacrilege and teeason, he
enablqd hiraself to go beyond the clemency of the old law, and
even of his own. The fate of others, and yet more of the history
of that time, I shall relate, — if, after my iraraediate undertaking
shall be accomplished, my life should be prolonged to other ex
ertions. Decius Silanus, to whom I now confine myself, de
tected in adultery with the granddaughter of Augustus, although
he was proceeded against in form no further than to be declared
to have lost the friendship of Caesar, yet well understood that
this consigned him to exile. It was not until the accession of
Tiberius to the empire, that, resting on the influence of Silanus,
his brother, a person conspicuous for his high rank and his elo
quence, he presumed to deprecate the anger of the senate and
the Prince, When that brother, in open senate, came to give
thanks for the successful issue of this appeal, Tiberius replied,
that he, too, rejoiced at his brother's return from so long an
exile, and that this might be permitted to him without depart
ure firom the fundamental jurisprudence, because he had not
been expelled by a decree of the senate, or an adjudication
pursuant to law. None the less, he added, I cherish against
him entire aU ray father's sentiraents of resentraent ; nor must
he assume that his return is to frustrate in any point the will
of Augustus. Ever afterwards he remained in the city, but
achieved none of its honors.
Ch. 25. Subsequently to this event, a proposition was intro
duced to mitigate the law Papia Poppaea, which Augustus in
the last yezur of his life had sanctioned, after the passage of the

512 TRANSLATIONS.
Julian ordinances upon the subject, for the punishraent of celi
bacy, and for replenishing the finances ofthe State. It had not
operated to raultiply raarriages, or to proraote the rearing of oflF-
spring. Such were the privileges of childlessness.
And now, day by day, increased the multitude of those who
were brought in peril of prosecution for offences ; for there was
not a house which the presence of the informer did not threaten
to undermine, and the community which once suffered from the
frequency of crime, now suffered from the uncertainty of law.
I am adraonished by this fact somewhat more deeply to con
sider and deduce the origin of civil justice, and the successive
progress by which this infinite multitude and variety of laws
has been accumulated.
Ch. 26. The most ancient of raen, in whora as yet there
dwelt no passion of evil, lived Without disgrace and without
guilt, and therefore without punishraent and without resteaint.
Of rewards there was no need, since virtue was sought for love
of itself, and desiring nothing forbidden by morality, they were
debarred frorfa nothing through fear. But when the equality of
nature became destroyed, and ambition and violence took the
place of moderation and the dread of dishonor, then came the
epoch of tyranny. In many nations this government has con
tinued without change. Some, in their origin, or after they
grew weary of kings, declared their preference for laws. They
were at first simple, as befitted the childhood of the human
mind. Of these the most celebrated were those of Crete, pre
scribed by Minos ; those of Sparta, by Lycurgus ; and those
raore refined and in greater number, of Athens, by Solon. Our
selves Romulus had ruled with uncontrolled absolutism. After
him, Numa imposed on the State the restraints of religion and
a code of divine law ; some further iraproveraents of polity were
inade by TuUus Hostilius and Ancus Martius, but Servius Tullus
was the true founder of a legal constitution which kings thera
selves should obey.
Ch. 27. Upon the expulsion of the Tarquins, the people of
Rome contrived raany regulations for the purpose of guarding
liberty and consolidating an union, — both endangered by the
functions ofthe senate.
Decemvirs were created ; and they, having gathered the best
laws from every source, digested them into the twelve tables,
with which closes the justice and reason of our legislation ; for
the laws of later date, although in some instances directed
against criminals, and suggested by their crimes, were oftener
the fruit of violence and the strife of contending orders in the
State, and had for their motive and end the attainment of pro
hibited honors, the expulsion of illustrious citizens, or some

TACITUS. 513
other kindred end or raotive of evil. In this disordered age of
the State figured the Gracchi and the Saturnini, inflaraers of
the people ; and Drusus, not less enorraous in his bribery, but
giving in the narae of the senate. That age, too, saw our aUies
debauched by the promises of one faction ; mocked by the in
terference and opposition of another. Even in the Italian war,
and subsequently in the civU, numerous and conteadictory laws
continued to be made, untU SyUa the Dictator, abolishing or
changing all which existed before, and adding many new, se
cured to the constitution and to jurisprudence an interval of
repose. But it was brief Iramediately after his administra
tion were passed the laws of Lepidus, so productive of disturb
ance ; and a little later was restored to the tribunes their whole
vast license of agitating the people at their will. And now acts
began to be passed, not for the whole community, but for indi
vidual cases ; and the more corrupt the State the raore numer
ous grew the laws.
Ch. 28. Then carae the age and fortunes of Cneius Pora-
peius. Chosen a third tirae consul, to cure the corruption of
the tirae, his reraedies were more terrible than the disease ; he
passed laws to teample on them ; the institutions he had guard
ed by the sword, he subverted by the sword. Twenty continu
ous years of discord succeeded. There was neither observance
of ancient custom, nor settled systera of law. Great crimes
were committed with impunity. The possession and display
of virtues were fatal. At length Augustus, now in his sixth
consulship, and firmly seated in power, abolished by a single
decree all the ordinances of his triuravirate, and prescribed a
body of law adapted to internal peace, and to the governraent
of a prince and to absolutism.
Heavier fetters were now forged. Informers were called into
life, and were incited by rewards to expose such as declined to
acquire the privilege of parents by marriage, to the end that the
people might intercept the legacies bequeathed to them, on the
ground of escheat to the general parent. Once recognized by
the State, they vastly teanscended the functions assigned them.
From the letter of the law, they penetrated to what they were
pleased to caU its spirit. The city, Italy, the universal Roman
race everywhere, they enfolded in their grasp. The entire social
and civil position of multitudes was overturned. Terror was
spreading among all ; when Tiberius, for the purpose of achiev
ing a remedy, constituted a commission composed of noble per
sons, — five who had been consuls, five who had been praetors,
with as many from the senate. Those persons, by relaxing the
severer and the greater number of the exactions of the law,
effected a temporary and smaU aUeviation of the evils brought
forward.

514 TRANSLATIONS.
Ch. 29. About the same time the Prince coraraended Nero,
a son of Germanicus, just then entering upon the age of youth,
to the notice of the senate ; and, in the phrase of petition, re
quested that he might be excused from passing through the
official duties of vigintivirate, and raight become candidate for
the praetorship five years before the legal period. This sort of
a request excited in thera who heard it an eraotion of derision.
He alleged, as a precedent, that upon the petition of Augustus
the sarae dispensation had been extended to hiraself and his
brother. I doubt not that there were those who even then
silently smUed at the idea of a petition frora their raaster ; al
though at that tirae the grandeur of the Caesars was but just in
its origin. Old custom was more vividly in view, and the rela
tionship of step-father and step-son formed a far lighter tie than
that of grandfather and grandchild. Besides granting the re
quest of the Prince for Nero, the senate, without solicitation,
added the pontificate ; and on the day of his first entrance to
the forum, largesses were bestowed on the multitude, who were
overjoyed at beholding a son of Germanicus advanced to the
class of young men. Soon the public joy was augmented by
the marriage of Nero to Julia, the daughter of Drusus. But
while these tidings delighted the general mind, far other senti
ments were inspired by ruraors that Sejanus was destined by
the Prince to becorae the father-in-law of the son of Claudius.
To the people this seeraed to stain the nobUity of that house,
and to lift Sejanus even beyond the daring hopes which he was
suspected to have conceived.
Ch. 30. At the close of that year died the" celebrated persons,
Lucius Volusius and Sallustius Crispus. The faraily of Volu-
sius was ancient, although it had been illusteated by no honor
beyond the prsetorship. He raised it to consular rank ; he added
the self-censorial office of designating the class of knights, and
he first acquired that unbounded wealth in which it flourished.
Crispus Sallustius was of equestrian rank by birth ; was the
nephew ofthe sister of, Caius Sallustius, the raost celebrated of
Roman historians ; was by him adopted and named with his
narae. The way to highest honors was open to him ; but, em
ulating the example of Maecenas, he declined the senatorial
dignity, yet in the reality of power rose far above many a
person who could boast his consulships and his triumphs. His
splendid and tasteful style of life was in strong contrast with
the manners of old times, and his profuseness and gorgeousness
of expenditure approached luxury ; yet beneath this lay energy
of character equal to the weightiest affairs, and which revealed
itself with more vigor and more effect at a moment when he
seemed most profoundly steeped in sleep and sloth. While,

TACITUS. 515
therefore, Maecenas lived he was second, after his death first, in
the confidence of Augustus and Tiberius, and he shared in the
knowledge of the murder of Agrippa Posthuraus. Later in
life, he retained the form rather than the reality of the favor of
his prince. This had happened to Msecenas also. Such seems
ever the fate of power. Rarely it lasts a lifetime, — perhaps
because satiety seizes the giver or the receiver : the giver, when
he has no more to bestow ; the receiver, when he has nothing
more to ask.
Ch. 31. The fourth consulship of Tiberius and the second of
Drusus foUowed, meraorable for the spectacle of father and son
bearing office as colleagues. Germanicus, two years before,
had stood in the same relation of honor ; but was less a cause
of joy to the Prince, and less endeared by ties of blood. In the
commencement of the sarae year Tiberius, assigning for the
cause the restoration of his health, went into Carapania, — per
haps for the purpose of tasting beforehand and by gradual ex
perience a long and perraanent reraoval from Rome ; perhaps to
permit Drusus, in the absence of his father, to perforra the duties
of the consulship alone. In his absence a trivial raatter, swell
ing to a serious difficulty, afforded to the young corisul an acci
dental means of acquiring popular favor. Doraitius Corbuso,
forraerly prsetor, complained to the senate of Lucius SyUa, a
noble youth, that, at the spectacle of gladiators, he had not
yielded him precedence of place 

INDEX.

Abbott, Alfred A., Letter to, i. 244.
Adams, John, i. 460. —As "Novanglus,"
ii. 84.
Adams, John- Q., i. 409.
Adams, Eev. Dr. N., i. 237, 314.
Adams, Faikchild v., Case of, i. 167.
Address, removal of Judges by, ii. 346.
Causes for, 361.
Agawam, the Indian name of Ipswich,
i. 347.
Agriculture develops the Spirit of Lib
erty, ii. 217.
AcrUEssEAu, D', i. 415.
Alger, Rev. W. E., i. 290.
American Indians, i. 336. — History, He
roic Age of, 371. — Bar, Functions of,
416. — Theory of Government, 432.' —
Eloquence, 460. — Historical Events,
Webster associated with, 486. — Na
tional Growth, 503. — "Museum,"
upon Protection, ii. 90, 91. — Feeling
toward England, 170-172. —After the
War of 1812, 219. — Nationahty, Ora
tion upon, 415, 418. — People, Unity
of, 418.
Andros, Sir Edmund, i. 356.
Antony, i. 458.
Ashburton Treaty, Webster's Negotiation
of, i. 526.
Athenian Democracy, i. 427, 435.
Augustus, i. 437.
Baltimore, Whig Convention at, i. 174.
Banks, Nathaniel P., ii. 399.
Bar, American, Functions of, i. 416.
— Its Conservative Influence, 417. —
Its Liberal Tendencies, 418. — Op
posed to Radicalism, 428. — Its Share
in fonning the Constitution, 429.
Bar of Essex, i. 24. — Meeting of the,
249.
Bar of Suffdh, Meeting of the, i. 249.
Benton, Thomas H., His views upon
Protection, ii. 178. — The Tariff of
1816, 229. — His Tables unsatisfac
tory, 232, 233.
Bible, Tlie, in Schools, i. 406.
Books, Limited Collections of, in Amer
ica, ii. 257.
Bright, Jesse D., Letter to, i. 104.
Bkinlet, Mrs., Letter to, i. 108.

British Poets of the Mth Century, Lecture
on the, i. 203.
Buchanan, James, Letter from, i. 249.
— His Speech respecting the Steamer
Carohne, ii. 18. — On the Oregon Ques
tion, 127.
BuKKE, Edmund, ii. 84, 413.
Bush, Eev. George, Letters to, i. 36,
37, 39, 73.
CsiSAE, Julius, i. 456.
Calhoun, John C, ii. 215, 243.
Caroline, 'lhe Steamer, ii. 5, 21, 55, 62.
Cases, Meaning of tlie Word, ii. 36-39.
Chatham, Lord, ii. 83.
Cherokees, Mission to the, i. 38.
Choate, David, Father of Rufus Choate
i. 2.
Choate, David, Brother of Rufus, his
Account of Eufus's Boyhood, i. 3.
Choate, Miriam, Mother of Eufus i
2.
Choate, Eufus. His Birth, i. 1. — An
cestry and Boyhood, 3. — College Life,
7. — Choice of a Profession, 11. — Is
Tutor at Dartmouth College, 15. 
Enters Law School at Cambridge, 15.
— Goes to Washington to study with
Mr. Wirt, 15. — Death of his Brother,
Washington Choate, 17. — Eeturns to
Essex, 17. — Testimony of Mr. Wirt,
17. — Admission to the Bar, 18. 
Opens an Office in South Danvers, 18.
— Letter to Mr. Marsh, 18. — Mar
riage, 19. — Removal to Salem, 24. 
The Essex Bar, 24. — Counsel in the
Knapp Case, 26. — His Studies, 27,
31. — Letter to President Marsh, 29.
— Nominated as Representative to
Congress, 30. — Is elected, 31. — Let
ter to President James Marsh, 33. —
Enters Congress, 34. — Speeches ou
Eevolutionary Pensions and on the
Tariff, 34, 35. — Letters to Dr. Andrew
Nichols, 35. — Letters to Professor
George Bush, 36, 37. — Georgia and
the IMissions to the Indians, 38. — Let
ter to Professor Bush, 39. — Eeele^ted
to Congress, 40. — Speech on the Ee-
moval of the Deposits, 40. — Resigns
his Seat, 42. — Eemoves to Boston, 42.

VOL. II.

44

518

INDEX.

Lectures on the Waverley Novels and
on the Romance of the Sea, 42. —
Death of his youngest Child, 44. —
His Professional Advancement, 46. —
Letters to Richard I. Storrs, Jr., 47. —
Chosen Senator in place of Mr. Web
ster, 48. — Death of General Harrison,
48. — Eulogy on General Harrison,
48. — Speech on the McLeod Case, 49.
— The Fiscal Bank Bill, 50. — Collis
ion with Mr. Clay, 55. — Nomination
of Mr. Everett as Minister to England,
56. — Letter to Mr. Sumner, 57. —
Letters to his Son, 58. — Speech on
providing Remedial Justice in the
United States Courts, 59. — Letters
to Mr. Sumner and Mr. Hillard, 63.—
The North Eastern Boundary Ques
tion, 68. — Journal, 65. — Address in
New York, 72. —Letter to Prof. Bush,
73. — Letters to Mr. Sumner, 74. —
Letter to his Daughters, 76. — Debate
on tlie Tariff, 77. — Reply to Mr. Mc
Duffie, 79. — Congress Adjourned, 84.
— Journal, 84. — Political Contest of
1844, 92. — Speaks for Mr. Clay, 92.
— Fragmentary Journal, 93. — Meet
ing of Congress, 98. — Speech against
the Annexation of Texas, 98. — Ad
mission of Iowa and Florida, 100. —
Establishment of the Smithsonian In
stitution, 101. — Library Plan, 102. —
Resignation of his position as Regent,
104. — Letter to Hon. Jesse D Bright,
104. — Letters to Hon. Charles W.
Upham, 106. — Illness and Death of
Dr. Sewell, 108. —Letter to Mrs.
Francis Brinley, 108. — Address be
fore the Law School in Cambridge,
109. — Case of Rhode Island Bounda
ry, 109. —Defence of Tirrell, 110. —
The Smith Will Case, 117. — Speaks
in favor of General Taylor, 121. — Of
fer of a Professorship in the Cam-
hridge Law School, 126. — Offer of a
Seat upon the Bench, 131. — Lecture
on the Puritans, 131. — The PhiUips'
Will Case, 134. — Fragmentary Jour
nal, 136. — Change of Partnership,
139. — Voyage to Europe, 139. —
Letters to Mrs. Choate, 139. — Jour
nal, 143. — Union Meetings, 162.
— Address on Washington, 163. —
The Case of Fairchild v, Adams,
167. — Address before the Story
Association, 172. — Webster Meet
ing in Faneuil Hall, 173. — India-
Rubber Case Argued, 174. — Balti
more Convention, 174. — Address to
the Phi-Beta Kappa Society in Bur
lington, Vt., 181. — Journey to Que
bec, 183. — Death of Mr. Webster,

184. —Letter toE. Jackson, Esq., 184.
— Letter to Harvey Jewell, Esq., 185.
— Letters to Mrs. Eames, 185, 186,
189, 190, 194.- Offer ofthe Attorney
Generalship, 187. — Convention to re-
> vise the Constitution of Massachu
setts, 187. — Eulogy on Daniel Web
ster at Dartmouth College, 187. —
Letter to Mr. Everett, 190. — Letters
to his Son, 191, 192, 193. — Letters to
his Daughter, 188, 191, 193. — Ad
dress at the Dedication of the Peabody
Institute at Danvers, 194. — Letter to
Mr. Everett, 194. — Accident and IU
ness, 195. — Letter to Mr. Eames, 195.
— Letter to the Whig Convention at
Worcester, 199. — Speaks at Faneuil
Hall, 201. — Letter to Rev. Chandler
Robbins, 202. — Lecture on the Early
British Poets of this Century, 203. —
Letters to Mr. Everett, 203, 228.— Sir
Walter Scott, 205. —Letter to Hon.
Wm. M. Evarts, 211. —PoUtical Cam
paign of 1856, 211. — Determines to
support Mr. Buchanan, 211. — Letter
to the Whigs of Maine, 212. ^. Address
fit Lowell, 217. —Letter to J. C.
Walsh, 219. — His Library, 221.—
Lecture on the Eloquence of Revolu
tionary Periods, 222. — Defence of
Mrs. Dalton, 222. — Oration before the
Boston Democratic Club, July 1858,
228. — Letter to Hon. George T. Da
vis, 234. — FaUing Health, 236. —
Speech at the Webster Festival, 1859,
237. — Address at the Essex Street
Church, 237.— His last Law Case, 241.
— Goes to Dorchester, 248. — Decides
to go to Europe, 244. — Letter to Hon.
Charles Eames, 244. — Letter to Hon.
A. A. Abbott, 244. — Embarks for Eu
rope, 245. — Illness on Board, 245. —
Lands at Halifax, 246. — Letter from
Hon. George S. Hillard, 245.— Sudden
Death, 248. — Proceedings of Public
Bodies at Halifax, 248. — Meeting of
the Essex and Suffolk Bars, 249.—
Speeches of Hon. C. G. Loring, R. H.
Dana, Jr., Judge Curtis, and Judge
Sprague, 250. — Meeting in Faneuil
Hall, 264. — Letter from Hon. J. H.
Clifford, 273. — Habits in his Office,
275. — Method of Preparation of Cases,
279. — Manner of Legal Study, 278.—
Intercourse with the younger Mem
bers ofthe Bar, 281. — Manner to the
Court, 282. — Charges and Income,
283. —Manner to the Jury, 285.—
Vocabulary, 286. — Wit and Humor,
287. — Conversations and Anecdotes,
289. — Eloquence, 293. — Power over
an Audience, 295. — Exaggerations,

INDEX.

297. — Style, 298. — Letter from Eev.
Joseph Tracy, 298. — Memory, 300.—
Quotations, 300.— Fondness for Books,
302. — Favorite Pursuits, 303. — Con
versation, 305. — Scholarship, 307.—
Home Life, 309. —Fondness for Mu
sic, 309. — Conversational Power, 311.
— Gentleness, 311. — Handwriting,
313. — Appearance, 313. — General
Health, 314. — Feelings upon Relig
ious Subjects, 315.— Death, 316.
Choate, Rufus, Jr., Letters to, i. 191,
192, 193.
Choate, Sarah B., Letters to, i. 188,
191, 193.
Choate, Washington, Death of, i.
17.
C/iurch, "without a Bishop," i. 379.
Cicero, i. 454. — His Orations against
Antony, 458.
Clat, Henet, Mr. Choate's collision
with, i. 55. — His Position in Refer
ence to the Annexation of Texas, il.
272, 281.
Clifford, J. H., Letter from, i. 273.
Coleridge, upon the State, i. 426.—
Upon Law, 436.
Columbia Kiver, The, ii. 129.
Commerce, Power of regulating, in the^
Constitution, ii. 102, 108. ''
Compromise, The Missouri, ii. 275. — A
Spirit of, necessary to the Preservation
ofthe Union, 319, 825. — Upon Sla
very in the Constitution of the United
States, 323, 324. — Is the Essence of
Politics, 432. — To be ranked among
the Whiter Virtues, 433.
Conscience needs to be Instructed, i. 552 :
ii. 321.
Conservatism ofthe Bar, i. 417, 421.
Constitution, the, of the U. S., Webster's
Devotion to, i. 551 ; ii. 446. — Confers
the Power of Protection to Home In
dustry, ii. 99. — Judicial Power under,
25, 27, 58. — Views of its Framers
regarding, 29-33. — In Criminal Cases,
41, 42. — Adopts the Laws of Nations
as Part of the Law of the U. S.. 44, 54.
— Holds out the Union as the Nation,
46, 47. — And the Duty of maintaining
Peace, 49. — Treaty-making Power
under, 51, 53, 64. — Law-making Power
under, 57, 64. — Judicial Tenure un
der, 292, 293. — Doctrine of, regarding
Annexation of New Territory, 278. -^
Its Compromises upon Slavery, 823,
324. — How it binds the States to
gether, 420.
Constitution of Massachusetts, Convention
to revise the, i. 187 ; ii. 284.
Construction of a Written Instrument, Rules
of, ii. 362.

519
Controversies, Meaning of the Word, ii.
35, 39, 41.
Convention qf 1818, between the United
States and Great Britain, ii. 125. — Of
1827, 125.
Convention of Whigs at Baltimore, i. 174.
Convention to Revise the Constitution of
Massachusetts, i. 187 ; ii. 284.
Copenhagen, Attack on by the English,
Crowninshield, Benjamin W., i. 30.
Cousin on Philosophy, i. 470.
Culture, Mental, developes the Power of
the State, i. 397. — True Characteris-
ties of, 401. — How best achieved, 406.
— To be cultivated by the Children of
Labor, 472. — Informs and directs our
Exertions, 473. — Refines and adorns
the Spirit, 474. — Soothes and relieves
our Burdens, 476.
Curtis, B. R., Address of, i. 257.
Cushing, Caleb, ii. 441.
Dalton, Mrs., Defence of, i. 222.
Dana, E. H., Jr., Address of, i. 252.
Danvers, i. 464.
Dartmouth College, its Eelations to Web
ster, i. 493, 500. — The famous Case
concerning, 514.
Davis, George T., Letter to, i. 234.
Davis, Judge Woodbury, Address for
his Removal, ii. 343. —Its Grounds,
348.
Debates, British ParUamentary, u. 228.
Declaration of Independence, The, Gener
alities of, i. 215. —Put into the Plat
form of a PoUtical Party, ii. 404, 407.
Democracy qf Athens, The, i. 427, 435.
Democratic 'Club, Oration before the, i.
234; ii. 415.
Demosthenes, his Early Career, i. 446.
— His Oration against Philip, 450.—
His Oration on the Crown, 451. — His
Death, 452.
Deposits, Removal of the. Speech upon,
i. 40.
Eames, Charles, i. 195, 254.
Eamiss, Mrs., Letters to, i. 186, 189, 190,
194, 196.
Elective Judiciary, An, ii. 297, 301. —
Offices in General, 298.
Eloquence of Eevolutionary Periods, i.
222, 443, 445. — Of Daniel Webster,
517.
England, Industry of, i. 407.
Essex Street Church, Address at, i. 237.
Evarts, Wm. M., Letter to, i. 211.
Everett, Edward, Nomination of, as
Minister to England, i. 56.— Letters to,
190, 194, 208.— Address of at FaneuU
HaU, on the Death of Mr. Choate, 264.

5£0

INDEX.

Exeter Academy, i. 498.
Expediency is ike Public Good, u. 435.
Fairchild v. Adams, Case of, i. 167.
Faneuil Hall, Meeting in, i. 264.
Faneuil Hall, Speech at, i. 201 ; ii. 827.
Fiscal Bank Bill, Speech on the, i. 50.
Fillmore, Mr., ii. 412.
FiTzsiMMONS, Mr., his Views upon Pro
tection and Free Trade, u. 114, 119,
185.
Florida, Admission of, into the Union
i. 100.
Fourth of July, The, Oration upon, ii.
415.
Franklin, Benjamin, ii. 83.
Free Trade, Webster's Opinions on, i.
524. — " Monthly Eeview " upon, ii.
238.
Fugitive Slave Law, Tlie, n. 295. — Web
ster's Views upon, i. 555.
Gallatin, Albert, u. 221.
Georgics, The, i. 441.
Germany, Protection in, ii. 238.
Goodrich, Chauncy A., His Descrip
tion ofthe Argument ofthe Dartmouth
College Case, i. 514.
Gottingen, Library of the University at, u.
256!
Government, American Theory of, i. 432.
Grattan, Henry, i. 459.
Greece, Public Life of, i. 449.
Habeas Corpus, Writ of, ii. 61, 68.
Hardin, Benjamin, i. 41.
Harrison, President, Inauguration and
Death of, i. 48. — Eulogy on, 48.
Hillard, George S., Letter from, i.
245. — Letter to, 63.
History should teach the Life of the Peo
ple, i. 323. —Its True Lessons, 389. —
Eomance of, 340. — Heroic Period
of American, 371.
Hosier, i. 826.
Hudson's Bay Company, ii. 152, 154-157.
— Its Quarrel with the North-west
Company, 162-164.
Hudson, Charles, upon the Trade of
Massachusetts, ii. 246.
Huntington, Asahel, Letter of, i. 22.
Independence, See Declaration.
Indians, American, their character, i.
886.
India Rubber Case, i. 174.
Iowa Admission of, into the Union, i.
100.
Ipswich, Address at, i. 42. — Early His
tory of, 347. — Its Independent Spirit,
358.
Irish Eloquence, i. 459.

Jackson, E., Letter to, i. 184.
Jewell, Harvey, Letter to, i. 185.
Judge, Character of the best, ii. 286, 288,
299. — Effect of his Station upon his
Character, 303. — Eemoval of by Ad
dress, 346. — Causes for, 361.
Judicial Power of the United States, u.
58, 60.
Judicial Tenure, What is the best, ii. 289.
— In New York, 290. — In Great Bri
tain, 291. — Under the Constitution
of the United States, 292. — In Mas
sachusetts, 294, 310. — By Appoint
ment is the best, 300. — For Life and
not for a Term of Years, 802. — Is not
anti-republican, 308.— But favors Lib
erty, 309. — Should be during Good
Behavior, 855. — History of this Ten-
" ure in Great Britain, 359.
Judiciary, An Elective, ii. 297. — Its Ef
fects upon the Judges, 304, 306. —
True Sphere of the, 365, 366. — Inde
pendence ofthe, 368.
Jurisdiction, The, of the United States
Courts, ii. 31, 32. — In Criminal Cases,
41, 42. — Under the Laws ofthe United
States, 57-60. — How to be exercised,
66-69.
Justice and Injustice, i. 434.
Kansas, Admission of to the Union, u.
399, 400. — Various BiUs for, 401-403.
Knapp, J. P., Trial of, i. 27, 510. \
Kossuth, i. 181.
Law, False Idea of, i. 430. — Its Histor
ical Origin, 481. — Administration of,
434. — Of Nations, u. 43. — Adopted
by the Constitution as part of the
Laws of the United States, 44, 48, 54.
— Power of making Laws under the
Constitution, 57-64.
Law School, Cambridge, Address deliv
ered before, i. 109. — Offer of a Profes
sorship in, 126.
Lawyer, The Eelaxations of the, i. 477.
Lectures, Popular, i. 468. — In Courses,
469 ; how best improved, 470, 471. —
At the Smithsonian Institution, ii. 253.
Liberty, Spirit of, in New England, i. 354,
361. — In the American Bar, 418. —
Eoman, Decay of, 456. — Manufactures
and Mechanical Arts favorable to, ii.
215, 216. — Also Agriculture, 217. —
Eelations of the Judicial Tenure to,
309.
Library, Public, one ofthe Objects ofthe
Smitlisonian Institution, ii. 265. —
Great Libraries of the World, 256. —
Need of, to the Student, 257-260. —
Of Congress, 263.
Literature, Consolations of, i. 477.

INDEX.

521

Loring, C. G., Address of, i. 250.
Loring, Judge, ii. 357.
Lowell, Speech at, i. 217 ; u. 387. — Its
Interests, 390.
Lucian, On the death of Demosthenes,
i. 453.
Macaulay, Lord, ii. 432.
Madison, James, His Views upon Pro
tection, ii. 76, 89. — His Plan for rais
ing a Revenue, 113. — How amended,
116. — His Views upon the Judiciary
of the United States, 31. — Upon the
National Union, 46.
Maine, The Bench of, u. 358. — Amend
ments to Constitution of, 378.
Mann, Horace, i. 404.
Manufactures, Value of, to a Country, ii.
212, 218. — Inspire the Spirit of Liber
ty, 215, 216. — The Union indispen
sable for their Interests, 389, 390.
Marsters, Rev. J. M., i. 304.
Marsh, Rev. Dr. James, Letters to, i.
18, 28, 33.
Mason, Jeremiah, i. 512.
Massachusetts, Influence of, i. 409 ; ii. 241,
244. — Her Trade, 246. — Judicial
Tenure in, 294, 310.
M'CuLLOCK, ii. 245.
McDuffie, Mr., Answer to, i. 79. —
His Tariff BiU, ii. 173, 176,
McLeod, Alexander, Case of, i. 49;
u. 3, 21.
McNab, Col., u. 10.
Miller, Hugh, i. 475.
Milton, i. 440.
Missouri Compromise, The, ii. 275.
Nationality, A FeeUng of, essential to the
Preservation of the Union, u. 311. --
American, Oration upon, 415. — Spirit
of, its Nature, 424. — An Active Vir
tue, 425i 426. — Its Effects in Amer
ica, 427. — How it grew up, 428. —
Demands a Specific Culture, 430. —
Ethics of, 438, 439.
New England, Romance of its History, i.
320, 327. — Its Early History, 329,
347. — Colonial Age of, 350. — Its
Spirit of Liberty, 353, 361. — Labors
of its Founders, 363, 366. — Its Early
Wars, 367. — Its MiUtary Spirit, 368.
—CUmate of, u. 231.— Webster's Love
of, 449. — (See Pilgrims, — Puritans.)
New England Society of New York, Ad
dress before, i. 72.
Nichols, Dr. Andrew, Letter to, i. 35.
Nisi Prius, Decisions at, u. 370-372.
North, Lord, ii. 85.
North-Eastern Boundary Question, i, 63.
Novanglus, Signature of John Adams,
u. 84, 86.

Olcott, Mills, i. 19.
Oliver, Stephen, Letter from, i. 30.
Oregon Question, the. Speeches upon, i.
76. — Conventions in Regard to the
Occupancy of, ii. 125. — Discussions
concerning, 129. — Whether bounded
by the 49th Parallel of Latitude, 130.,
— Eeasons for continuing the Con
vention, regarding, 181. — Claims of
Great Britain to, 138, 153. — Emigra
tion to, 147. — Diplomatic Negotia
tions about, 150. — Views of the Eng
lish Press concerning, 153. — Claim
of the Hudson's Bay Company to,
154-157. — Missionaries in, 158. — As
a Hunting Ground, 159, 160. — Its Fu
ture, 167.
Otis, James, U. 82, 86.
Pardon, Power of, ii. 43.
Parker, E. G., i. 301.
Peabody, George, i. 465.
Peabody Institute, Address at the Dedica
tion of, i. 194, 464. —Its System of
Instruction, 467.
Pennsylvania, ii. 241.
Pensions, Revolutionary, Speech on, i. 34.
Pekley, Chief Justice, Eulogy by, i. 12.
Phi-Beta Kappa Society of the University
of Vermont, Address before the, i. 181.
Philip of Mount Hope, i. 327, 337. —
His War a fit Subject for Romance,
328.
Phillips's Will Case, i. 184.
Pilgrims, Age of, the Heroic Age of
American History, i. 371. — Their
Character, 376, 382. — Influence of
Switzerland upon, 378, 380. — Thpir
Motives, 383. — Their Trials, 387. —
Their Heroism, 389. — Their Tri
umphs, 412. — (See Puritans.)
Poland, Lecture on, i. 42.
Political Reform, i. 419, 437.
Polk, James K., his Position in refer
ence to the Annexation of Texas, ii.
269, 281.
Protection, Webster's Views upon, i. 525.
— Constitutional Power of Congress
in reference to, ii. 75, 121. — Madison's
Views upon, 76. — Included in the
Power to regulate Trade, 79, 87. —
Practised by the several States, 88. —
Arguments concerning in the "Ameri
can Museum," 90, 91, 204. —By Syl
vius and other Writers, 93-98. — In
tended to be conferred by the Con
stitution, 99, 101. — Under the Power
of Regulating Commerce, 102, 108. —
Unrestricted there, 104, 105. — De
manded by the People in the Early
Period of our History, 106. — Regard
ed by them as contained in the Con-

522

INDEX.

stitution, 107-110. — So regarded by
its Framers, 112. — Mr. Madison's Plan
for raising a Revenue, 118, 184. — How
amended by Mr. Fitzsimmons, 115. —
Doctrines of the extreme South con
cerning Protection, 117, 119. — Uni
versal approval of it, 120. — Its Ad
vantages, 122, 124. — No longer an
open Question for Discussion, 175. —
What is a Protective Tariff, 199. —
Protection under the Tariff of 1789,
200. — Rejoicing of the People over
it, 207, 208. —Under the Tariff of 1816,
211, 217. — To what Extent it had
developed Manufactures, 221, 222. —
Under the Tariff of 1820, 226. — Brit
ish Views regarding, 227. — What
Amount is necessary, 234-237. — Pro
tection in Germany, 238. — Effect of
upon Massachusetts, 241-243.
Puritans of New England, their Charac
ter, i. 131, 333, 351. — Influence of
their Situation upon, 361. (See PU
grims.)
Radical Tendencies oj the Times, i. 425.
Reform, Political, i. 419, 487.
Removal of Causes from the State to the
United States Courts, u. 66-69. — Of
Judges by Address, 246. — Causes for,
361.
Remedial Justice, Speech on the, provid
ing further, in the Courts of the Unit
ed States, i. 59 ; u. 31.
Revolutions, i. 442.
Revolutionary Periods, Eloquence of, i.
443, 445. — Grecian, 446. — Eoman,
454. — Irish, 459. — American, 460.
Rhode Island Boundary Case, i. 109.
Robbins, Rev. Chandler, Letter to,
i. 202.
Roman Liberty, Decay of, i. 456.
Scott, Walter, his Methods of Compo
sition, i. 321. — His Genius, 205, 342.
— His Death, 345. — His resemblance
to Webster, 541.
Sea, Romance of tlie. Lecture on, i. 42.
Sectional Parties, ii.- 408-410, 421, 422.
Sewall, Dr., Death of, i. 108.
Shaw, Chief Justice, Letter of, i. 21.
Sherljf, his Title to Office, ii. 350.
Slavenj, Effect of the Annexation of
Texas upon, ii. 274. — Should be re
mo ved from PoUtics, 320. — The North
should not interfere with, 322. — Po
Utical Party against, 333, 334. — Its
Dangers, 336, 391-394. —Arguments
against, 337, 398. — A Geographical
Party, 408-410 ; 421, 422.
Smith, Adam, U. 87.
Smith, Oliver, Will Case of, i. 117.

Smithsonian Institution, The, i. 101 ; ii. 248.
— Its Funds, 249. — Various Objects
aimed at in its Foundation, 250. — As a
CoUege or University, 251. — Objec
tions to this Plan, 252, 261. — Courses
of Lectures at, 253. — A great PubUc
Library, 255-260.
Sprague, Judge, Address of, i. 261.
Stamp Act, The, ii. 82.
State, " without a King," i. 379. — True
Idea of, 422.
States, Eights and Duties of, under the
Constitution, ii. 50, 64.
Storrs, Eichard S., Jr., Letters to,
i. 47.
Story, Judge, i. 513.
Story Association, Address before the,
i. 172.
Sumner, Charles, Letters to, i. 57, 61,
62, 63, 74.
Switzerland, Influence of, upon the Char
acter ofthe PUgrims, i. 378, 880.
Tariffs, Speeches upon the, i. 34, 77. —
Effects of different, ii. 181, 198. — Of
1789, 182 .— Debates upon, 187-197. —
Rejoicings of the People over, 207, 208.
— Of 1816, 211, 217. — Of 1820, 226. —
British Views regarding Foreign, 227.
— Mr. Benton's Opinions concerning
that of 1816, 229. —Not to be Ughtly
meddled with, 240.
Taylor, Gen., jllection of as President,
i. 121.
Texas, The Annexation of, i. 98 ; u. 268.
— Mr. Polk's Position with respect to,
269. — Mr. Clay's, 272. —Its EvUs,
274. — Nature of the Country, 277.—
Its Wants, 279.
Ticknor, George, i. 290.
Tirrell, Albert J., Defence of, i. 110.
Tracy, E. C, Testimony of, i. 8.
Tracy, Rev, Joseph, Letter from, i. 298.
Treaties, Power of making, under the
Constitution, ii. 51, 53, 64.
Tyler, Vice-President, assumes Duties
of the Presidency, i. 48.
Union, The, of the United States ce
mented by their Early History, i. 843. —
Relations of Slavery to, 556. — Alone
confers National Existence on the
States, ii. 46. — The only Security for
the Preservation of Peace, 70. — Effect
ofthe Annexation of Texas upon, 268,
275. — Webster's Devotion to, 446,
447. — Choate's Speech in Faneuil
Hall, Nov. 26, 1850, upon the Preser
vation of, 311. — A Feeling of Nation
ality essential to, 314. — Events and
Tendencies injurious to, 316. — A spirit
of Compromise necessary to its Pre-

INDEX.

523

servation, 319, 325, 432. — True Bonds
of, 829. — Indispensable for the Pro
tection of Manufacturing Interests,
389, 390. — Antagonism between Love
of, and Love of several States, 419. —
Its Glories, 431.
Union Savers, u. 413.
Upham, Charles W.,' Letters to, i. 106.
Walsh, J. C, Letter to, i. 219.
War, Acts of, what are, ii. 63.
Washington, Address on, i. 163.
Waverley Novels, Lecture on, i. 42. —
Supplements of History, 323.
Webster,Daniel, Appointed Secretary
of State, i. 48. — Meeting in Faneuil
Hall in Honor of, 173. — Death of, 184.
— Resolutions of the Bar of the United
States Circuit Court upon, 479. — Re
marks of Mr. Choate upon them, 479.
— Is associated with all the Great His
torical Events of Araerica, 486. — His
Literary Works, 488. — His Elevation
of Mind in Public Affairs, and Con
servatism, 490. — His Proper Monu
ment, 492. — Eulogy on, 187, 493. —
His Relations to Dartmouth College,
494. — His wide-spread Fame, 495. —
Tributes to his Memory, 496. — His
Youth, 480, 497. — Sent to Exeter
Academy, 498. — Placed under Mr.
Wood's Tutelage, 499. — Enters Col
lege and his Studies there, 500. — His
first Oratorical Efforts, 501. — Stu
dies Law, and is admitted to the Bar,
502. -His Mental Qualities, 504. -His
twofold Eminence as Statesman and
Lawyer, 481, 506. — His Early Pro
fessional Career, 482, 507. — His Char
acter as a Jurist, 483, 508. — In the
Knapp Trial, 510. — In the Dartmouth
College Case, 484, 514. — Effect of his
Eloquence, 517. — His Character as
a Statesman, 482, 518. — His Great

Measures, 485, 519, 520. — His Polit
ical Consistency, 523. — His Opinions
on Free Trade, 524. — On Protection,
525. — His Negotiation ofthe Ashbur
ton Treaty, 626. — His Intellectual
Power, 532. — Contrasted with other
Great Men, 534. — His Style, 536. —
His Literary Acquirements, 488, 687.
— His Practical Knowledge, 538. —
JEs Affectionate Nature, 589. — His
Tastes and Recreations, 540. — His re
semblance to Walter Scott, 541. —
His closing Days, 642. — His Oratory,
487, 543. — Contrasted with that of
other Ages and Men, 545. — The Mo
rality of his PubUc Character, 647. —
BUs Patriotism, 491, 648. — During
the War of 1812, 549. — His Great
Speech on the 7th of March, 1850, 550.
~ — His Devotion to the Constitution,
551-554. -^ His Views on the Fugitive
Slave Law, 555, 656. — His Home and
Tomb, 667, 558. — Festival in Honor of
his Birthday, i. 237 ; n. 440. — The
very Foremost of great American
Statesmen, 443, 444. — His Position
in American History, 446. — Devotion
to the Union and the Constitution his
Specialty, 446, 447. —His Ambition,
448. — His Love for New England, 449.
— His Negotiation of the Case of the
Steamer CaroUne, 21. — His Senti
ments upon Slavery, 339. — Upon the
Memories of Lexington, 390.
Whately, Archbishop, ii. 434.
Whig Convention at Baltimore, i. 174.
Whigs of Maine, Letter to, i. 212.
Whigs, Convention of, at Worcester, i.
199.
Whipple, E. P., i. 291.
Wilkes, John, Anecdote of, i. 333.
Winslow, Rev. Hubbard, i. 44.
Wirt, Hon. Wm., Testimony of, i. 17.
Wood, Mr., Tutor of Webster, i. 499.

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