Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

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

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

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

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

liberties of Spain.

--

"Now Europe's balanced-neither side prevails;

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

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

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

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

[ocr errors]

I

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

[ocr errors]

X

not to alter the Constitution until he should return. You may make what entries on parchment you please; - give me a Constitution that will last for half a century; that is all I wish for. No Constitution that you can make will last the one-half of half a century. Sir, I wili stake anything, short of my salvation, that those who are malecontent now will be more malecontent, three years hence, than they are at this day. I have no favor for this Constitution. I shall vote against its adoption, and I shall advise all the people of my district to set their faces ay, and their shoulders, too against it.

156. IN FAVOR OF A STATE LAW AGAINST DUELLING. — Compilation.

[ocr errors]

THE bill which has been read, Mr. Speaker, claims the serious attention of this House. It is one in which every citizen is deeply interested. Do not, I implore you, confound the sacred name of honor with the practice of duelling,- with that ferocious prejudice which attaches all the virtues to the point of the sword, and is only fitted to make bad men bold. In what does this prejudice consist? In an opinion the most extravagant and barbarous that ever took possession of the human mind! - in the opinion that all the social duties are supplied by courage; that a man is no more a cheat, no more a rascal, no more a calumniator, if he can only fight; and that steel and gunpowder are the true diagnostics of innocence and worth. And so the law of force is made the law of right; murder, the criterion of honor! To grant or receive reparation, one must kill or be killed! All offences may be wiped out by blood! If wolves could reason, would they be governed by maxims more atrocious than these?

But we are told that public opinion -- the opinion of the community in which we live upholds the custom. And, Sir, if it were so, is there not more courage in resisting than in following a false publie opinion? The man with a proper self-respect is little sensitive to the unmerited contempt of others. The smile of his own conscience is more prized by him than all that the world can give or take away. Is there any guilt to be compared with that of a voluntary homicide? Could the dismal recollection of blood so shed cease ever to cry for vengeance at the bottom of the heart? The man who, with real or affected gayety and coolness, goes to a mortal encounter with a fellow-being, is, in my eyes, an object of more horror than the brute beast who strives to tear in pieces one of his kind. True courage is constant, immutable, self-poised. It does not impel us, at one moment, to brave murder and death; and, the next, to shrink pusillanimously from an injurious public opinion. It accompanies the good man everywhere, to the field of danger, in his country's cause; to the social circle, to lift his voice in behalf of truth or of the absent; to the pillow of disease, tc fortify him against the trials of sickness, and the approach of death. Sir, if public opinion is unsound on this subject, let us not be partici pants in the guilt of upholding a barbarous custom. Let us affix to it the brand of legislative rebuke and disqualification. Pass this bill,

and you do you? part in arresting it. Pass this bill, and you place a shield between the man who refuses a challenge and the public opinion that would disgrace him. Pass this bill, and you raise a barrier in the road to honor and preferment, at which the ambitious man will pause and reflect, before engaging in a duel. As fathers, as brothers, as men, and as legislators, I call on this House to suppress an evil which strikes at you in all these relations. I call on you to raise your hands against a crime, the disgrace of our land, and the scourge of our peace!

J. Q. Adams.

157 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, and son of John Adams, the Second President, was born at Quincy, Massachusetts, July 11th, 1767. After studying law, he entered political life, was appointed minister to the Netherlands by Washington, and filled many high offices, till he reached the highest, in 1825. He died in the Capitol, at Washington, while a inember of the House of Representatives, 1848. His last words, as he fell in a fit, from which he did not recover, were, "This is the last of earth!"

[ocr errors]

THE Declaration of Independence! The interest which, in that paper, has survived the occasion upon which it was issued, the interest which is of every age and every clime, the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes, is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first solemn declaration by a Nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil Government. It was the corner-stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished, at a stroke, the lawfulness of all Governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced, in practical form, to the world, the transcendent truth of the inalienable sovereignty of the People. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination, but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union. From the day of this declaration, the People of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master, in another hemisphere. They were no longer children, appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother; no longer subjects, leaning upon the shattered columns of royal promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights. They were a Nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A Nation was born in a day.

"How many ages hence

Shall this, their lofty scene, be acted o'er,

In States unborn, and accents yet unknown?"

It will be acted o'er, fellow-citizens, but it can never be repeated. It stands, and must forever stand, alone; a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes, for a genial and saving light, till time shall be lost in eternity, and this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men, a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed. So long as this planet shall be inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall be of a social nature, so long as Government shall be necessary to the great moral

purposes of society, so long as it shall be abused to the purposes of oppression, so long shall this declaration hold out, to the sovereign and to the subject, the extent and the boundaries of their respective rights and duties, founded in the laws of Nature and of Nature's God.

158. WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF.-J. Q. Adams, in the U. S House of Representatives, on reception of these memorials by Congress. THE Sword of Washington! The staff of Franklin! O, Sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunderbolt, the printing-press, and the ploughshare! What names are these in the scanty catalogue of the bene factors of human kind! Washington and Franklin! What other two men, whose lives belong to the eighteenth century of Christendom, have left a deeper impression of themselves upon the age in which they lived, and upon all after time?

Washington, the warrior and the legislator! In war, contending, by the wager of battle, for the independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race, ever manifesting, amidst its horrors, by precept and by example, his reverence for the laws of peace, and for the tenderest sympathies of humanity; in peace, soothing the ferocious spirit of discord, among his own countrymen, into harmony and union, and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed, in ancient times, to the lyre of Orpheus.

Franklin! - The mechanic of his own fortune; teaching, in early youth, under the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; and wresting from the tyrant's hand the still more afflictive sceptre of oppression: while descending into the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in the dead of winter, the battle and the breeze, bearing in his hand the charter of Independence, which he had contributed to form, and tendering, from the self-created Nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the olive-branch of peace, the mercurial wand of commerce, and the amulet of protection and safety to the man of peace, on the pathless ocean, from the inexorable cruelty and merciless rapacity of war.

And, finally, in the last stage of life, with fourscore winters upon his head, under the torture of an incurable disease, returning to his native land, closing his days as the chief magistrate of his adopted commonwealth, after contributing by his counsels, under the Presidency of Washington, and recording his name, under the sanction of devout prayer, invoked by him to God, to that Constitution under the authority of which we are here assembled, as the Representatives of the North American People, to receive, in their name and for them,

« AnteriorContinuar »