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with the most sincere desire to see that territory in the possession of such of our own people as desire to occupy it-whether hereafter as an independent nation, as was originally suggested by a distinguished Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) and more recently by a no less distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Webster,) or as a portion of our own wide-spread and glorious republic-I am opposed to the steps which are now about to be so hotly pursued.*

"Sir, I feel that I have a right to express something more than an ordinary interest in this matter. There is no better element in our title to Oregon than that which has been contributed by Boston enterprise. You may talk about the old navigators of Spain, and the Florida treaty, and the settlement of Astoria, and the survey of Lewis and Clarke, as much as you please, but you all come back, for your best satisfaction, to 'Auld Robin Gray' in the end. Captain Robert Gray, of Boston, in the good ship Columbia, gave you your earliest right of foothold upon that soil.

"I have seen, within a few months past, the last survivor of his hardy crew, still living in a green old age, and exhibiting with pride a few original sketches of some of the scenes of that now memorable voyage. My constituents all feel some pride in their connection with the title to this territory. But in their name I protest against the result of their peaceful enterprise being turned to the account of an unnecessary and destructive war. I protest against the pure current of the river which they discovered, and to which their ship has given its noble name, being wantonly stained with either American or British blood! "But while I am thus opposed to war for Oregon, or to any measures which, in my judgment, are likely to lead to war, I shall withhold no vote from any measure which the friends of the administration may bring forward for the defence of the country. Whether the bill be for two regiments or for twenty regiments, it shall pass all unopposed by me. To the last file, to the uttermost farthing, which they may require of us, they shall have men and money for the public protection. But the responsibility for bringing about such a state of things shall be theirs, and theirs only. They can prevent it if they please. The Peace of the country and the Honour of the country are still entirely compatible with each other. The Oregon question is still perfectly susceptible of an amicable adjustment, and I

* i. e. Giving the notice to Great Britain that the convention of joint occupation be at an end.

rejoice to believe that it may still be so adjusted. We have had omens of peace in the other end of the Capitol, if none in this. But, if war comes, the Administration must take the responsibility for all its guilt and all its disgrace."

Mr. Winthrop made an electrifying speech on the question of granting to the President a sum of two millions of dollars for the purpose of arranging affairs between the United States and Mexico. He voted in favour of granting the supply.

The mental qualifications of this member are of a very high order; and, moreover, they are under the rigid discipline of a strong understanding, and therefore are eminently calculated for usefulness. He impartially weighs a man's worth before he yields his esteem; perhaps it may be said that his approaches in friendship would be slow; and that he would not be blinded by affection, even in his appreciation of his dearest friend. No impulses, no exaggerations, no gigantic aspirations hurry him beyond the bounds of reasonable, practicable, common sense measures. But I would confide in his zeal when he is once convinced of the rectitude of his cause, as implicitly as I would trust in the caution with which he chooses his course. The temper of Mr. Winthrop is proud and enduring; not hasty or petulant; and I have seen him listen in cold and haughty silence to taunts directed against himself which would render an ordinary man furious; but this calm and unbending spirit fails him when he is attacked through the fair name of his friends; then his generous indignation is instantly aroused, and valiantly he hurries on to the rescue. Honored and happy is the man who has Winthrop for his defender.

Mr. Winthrop is the lineal descendant of John Winthrop, the first Governor of the State of Massachusetts, and the founder of Boston, who came over in 1630. Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States, gives us many highly interesting and peculiar anecdotes of the family of Mr. Winthrop, and I have been delighted, in reading the history of these early settlers, to compare his character with theirs, and to find how truly he is the heir of their virtues as well as of their name. In stern religious and moral feeling, in the love of freedom and independence, in moral and physical courage, in honesty, in fidelity, in charity, in patience, he resembles strongly the first Fathers of Massachusetts; and on these elder virtues he has engrafted all the accomplishments of later times. The honours which his ancestors have won, by him will be maintained, pure and unsullied as they were received. I have traced, with curious interest, a likeness in Mr. Winthrop to the features of John

Winthrop (the first Governor), in a portrait painted by Vandyke; and should I revisit America, as I hope, I shall be strangely tempted to ask his permission to try how becomingly he would look in a starched lace ruffle, such as adorns the neck of the Pilgrim Governor. The landing of these interesting adventurers, the kindred of our own forefathers, in their new and unknown home, is the subject of many efforts on the canvass; but what charming tableaux vivants for Thanksgiving Day might be constructed from the history of their progress; the actors in the imaginative scene being the actual descendants of the heroic men and women who performed so important a drama on the theatre of the world. What mingled pictures of the sublime, the heroic, the pathetic, the amusing, nay of the ludicrous, might be conjured up from these spirited narratives; and it would be so delightful thus to dramatise the past, and to annihilate the space of two centuries. The ladies of the family of Endicott, of Salem, Massachusetts, bear also a striking resemblance to the handsome features of their magnanimous and intrepid predecessor. I shall never forget their sweet faces.

Mr. Winthrop is fair, and his colour comes and goes when he is speaking; his bearing is highly aristocratic. In conversation the natural and cultivated resources of his mind give him great advantages; his language is very refined, and his taste in reading is of the best kind; he has charmed me by his devoted love of Shakspeare. His public speeches are ever dictated by a sense of duty, and by the truest patriotism; their popularity or unpopularity is a part of them which never concerns him. In private life he is universally esteemed and respected. Massachusetts may well be proud, both of his present promise, and of his future fame.

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If one were called on to say what, upon the whole, was the most distinctive and characterizing feature of the age in which we live, I think he might reply, that it was the rapid and steady progress of the influence of Commerce upon the social and political condition of man. The policy of the civilized world is now everywhere and eminently a commercial policy. longer do the nations of the earth measure their relative conse

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quence by the number and discipline of their armies upon the land, or their armadas upon the sea. The tables of their imports and exports, the tonnage of their commercial marines, the value and variety of their home trade, the sum total of their mercantile exchanges, these furnish the standards by which national power and national importance are now marked and measured. Even extent of territorial dominion is valued little, save as it gives scope and verge for mercantile transactions; and the great use of colonies is what Lord Sheffield declared it to be half a century ago, "the monopoly of their consumption, and the carriage of their produce.'

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Look to the domestic administration, or the foreign negotiation of our own, or any other civilized country. Listen to the debates of the two houses of the Imperial Parliament. What are the subjects of their gravest and most frequent discussions? The succession of families? The marriage of princes? The conquest of provinces? The balance of power?-No, the balance of trade, the sliding scale, corn, cotton, sugar, timber-these furnish now the home-spun threads upon which the statesmen of modern days are obliged to string the pearls of their parliamentary rhetoric. Nay, the Prime Minister himself is heard discoursing upon the duties to be levied upon the seed of a certain savoury vegetable-the use of which not even Parisian authority has rendered quite genteel upon a fair day— as gravely, as if it were as true in regard to the complaints against the tariff of Great Britain, as some of us think it is true in reference to the murmurs against our own American tariff, that "all the tears which should water this sorrow, live in an onion!"

Cross over to the continent. What is the great fact of the day in that quarter? Lo, a convention of delegates from ten of the independent states of Germany, forgetting their old political rivalries and social feuds, flinging to the winds all the fears and jealousies which have so long sown dragon's teeth along the borders of neighbouring states of disproportioned strength and different forms of government-the lamb lying down with the lion-the little city of Frankfort with the proud kingdom of Prussia-and all entering into a solemn league to regulate commerce and secure markets! What occupy the

thoughts of the diplomatists, the Guizots, and Aberdeens, and Metternichs? Reciprocal treaties of commerce and navigation -treaties to advance an honest trade, or sometimes (I thank Heaven!) to abolish an infamous and accursed traffic-these are the engrossing topics of their protocols and ultimatums.

Even wars, when they have occurred, or when they have been rumoured, for a quarter of a century past, how almost uniformly has the real motive, whether of the menace or of the hostile act, proved to be—whatever may have been the pretence -not, as aforetime, to destroy, but to secure, the sources of commercial wealth. Algiers, Affghanistan, China, Texas, Oregon, all point more or less directly, to one and the same pervading policy throughout the world-of opening new markets, securing new ports, and extending commerce and navigation over new lands and new seas.

But the most signal and most gratifying illustration of the predominating influence of commerce in the affairs of the world, is to be drawn not from the consideration of wars, but of peace. It is a common form of remark, that the protracted and general peace, which the world has of late enjoyed, has been the cause of that vast extension of commerce which is everywhere witnessed. And, doubtless, there is much truth in the idea intended to be conveyed by it. Certainly, too, there has been, and always will be, much of action and reaction in these coinciding circumstances, and much to account for various readings in the assignment of cause and consequence. Yet I cannot but think that the time has at length fully come, when the mode of stating the relations between these great interests, should be changed; and when commerce may fairly be considered as having substantiated its claim to that highest of all titles, the great conservator of the world's peace, instead of being represented as a helpless dependent on peace for the liberty of prosecuting its own pursuits.

Indeed, commerce has, in all ages, been the most formidable antagonist of war. That great struggle for the mastery, which has been going on, almost from the earliest syllable of recorded time, upon the theatre of human life, and which has been variously described and denominated, according to the aspect in which it has been regarded, or the object with which it was discussed-now as a struggle between aristocracy and democracy, and now as between the few and the many-has been little more than a struggle between the mercantile and the martial spirit.

For centuries, and cycles of centuries, the martial spirit has prevailed. The written history of the world is one long bloody record of its triumph. And it cannot have escaped any one, how, during the periods of its sternest struggles, it has singled out the commercial spirit as its most formidable foe. Look at ancient Sparta for example; the state which, more than any

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