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these venerable relics of the wise, the valiant, and the good founders of our great confederated Republic, these sacred symbols of our golden age. May they be deposited among the archives of our Gover..ment! And may every American, who shall hereafter behold them, ejaculate a mingled offering of praise to that Supreme Ruler of the Universe, by whose tender mercies our Union has been hitherto preserved, through all the vicissitudes and revolutions of this turbulent world; and of prayer for the continuance of these blessings, by the dispensations of Providence, to our beloved country, from age to age, till time shall be no more!

150. UNION LINKED WITH LIBERTY, 1833.-Andrew Jackson. B. 1767; d. 1843. WITHOUT Union, our independence and liberty would never have been achieved; without Union, they can never be maintained. Divided into twenty-four, or even a smaller number of separate communities, we shall see our internal trade burdened with numberless restraints and exactions; communication between distant points and sections obstructed, or cut off; our sons made soldiers, to deluge with blood the fields they now till in peace; the mass of our People borne down and impoverished by taxes to support armies and navies; and military leaders, at the head of their victorious legions, becoming our lawgivers and judges. The loss of liberty, of all good Government, of peace, plenty and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union. In supporting it, therefore, we support all that is dear to the freeman and the philanthropist.

The time at which I stand before you is full of interest. The eyes of all Nations are fixed on our Republic. The event of the existing crisis will be decisive, in the opinion of mankind, of the practicability of our Federal system of Government. Great is the stake placed in our hands; great is the responsibility which must rest upon the People of the United States. Let us realize the importance of the attitude in which we stand before the world. Let us exercise forbearance and firmness. Let us extricate our country from the dangers which surround it, and learn wisdom from the lessons they inculcate. Deeply impressed with the truth of these observations, and under the obliga tion of that solemn oath which I am about to take, I shall continue to exert all my faculties to maintain the just powers of the Constitution, and to transmit unimpaired to posterity the blessings of our Federal Union.

At the same time, it will be my aim to inculcate, by my official acts, the necessity of exercising, by the General Government, those powers only that are clearly delegated; to encourage simplicity and economy in the expenditures of the Government; to raise no more money from the People than may be requisite for these objects, and in a manner that will best promote the interests of all classes of the community, and of all portions of the Union. Constantly bearing in mind that, in entering into society, individuals must give up a share of liberty to

preserve the rest," it will be my desire so to discharge my duties as to faster with our brethren, in all parts of the country, a spirit of liberal concession and compromise; and, by reconciling our fellow-citizens to those partial sacrifices which they must unavoidably make, for the preservation of a greater good, to recommend our invaluable Government and Union to the confidence and affections of the American People. Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before whom I now stand, and who has kept us in his hands from the infancy of our Republic to the present day, that he will so overrule all my intentions and actions, and inspire the hearts of my fellow-citizens, that we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds, and continue for

ever a UNITED AND HAPPY PEOPLE.

160. RESPONSIBILITIES OF A RECOMMENDATION OF WAR.- Horace Binney.

WHAT are sufficient causes of war, let no man say, let no legislator say, until the question of war is directly and inevitably before him. Jurists may be permitted, with comparative safety, to pile tome upon tome of interminable disquisition upon the motives, reasons and causes, of just and unjust war; metaphysicians may be suffered with impu nity to spin the thread of their speculations until it is attenuated to a cobweb; but, for a body created for the government of a great nation. and for the adjustment and protection of its infinitely diversified interests, it is worse than folly to speculate upon the causes of war, until the great question shall be presented for immediate action, — until they shall hold the united question of cause, motive, and present expe diency, in the very palm of their hands. War is a tremendous evil. Come when it will, unless it shall come in the necessary defence of our national security, or of that honor under whose protection national security reposes, it will come too soon; - too soon for our national prosperity; too soon for our individual happiness; too soon for the frugal, industrious, and virtuous habits of our citizens; too soon, perhaps, for our most precious institutions. The man who, for any cause, save the sacred cause of public security, which makes all wars defensive, the man who, for any cause but this, shall promote or compel this final and terrible resort, assumes a responsibility second to nay, transcendently deeper and higher than any, which man can assume before his fellow-men, or in the presence of God, his Creator.

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161. THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.-Horace Binr.eg.

WHAT, Sir, is the Supreme Court of the United States? It is the august representative of the wisdom and justice and conscience of this whole People, in the exposition of their Constitution and laws It is the peaceful and venerable arbitrator between the citizens in all questions touching the extent and sway of constitutional power. It is the great moral substitute for force in controversies between the People, the States and the Union. It is that department of Adminis

tration whose calm voice dispenses the blessings of the Constitution. in the overthrow of all improvident or unjust legislation by a State, directed against the contracts, the currency, or the intercourse of the People, and in the maintenance of the lawful authority and institutions of the Union, against inroads, by color of law, from all or any of the States, or from Congress itself. If the voice of this tribunal, created by the People, be not authoritative to the People, what voice can be? None, my fellow-citizens, absolutely none, but that voice which speaks through the trumpet of the conqueror.

It has been truly said, by an eminent statesman, "that if that which Congress has enacted, and the Supreme Court has sanctioned, be not the law, then the reign of the law has ceased, and the reign of individual opinion has begun." It may be said, with equal truth, that if that which Congress has enacted, and the Supreme Court has sanctioned, be not the law, then has this Government but one department, and it is that which wields the physical force of the country. If the Supreme Court of the Union, or its authority, be taken away, what remains? Force, and nothing but force, if the Union is to continue at all. The world knows of no other powers of Government, than the power of the law, sustained by public opinion, and the power of the sword, sustained by the arm that wields it. I hold it, Sir, to be free from all doubt, that wherever an attempt shall be made to destroy this Union, if it is under the direction of ordinary understanding, it will begin by prostrating the influence of Congress, and of the Supreme Court of the United States.

102. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES NOT AN EXPERIMENT, 1837.-Hugh S. Legare. Born in South Carolina, 1797; died, 1843.

WE are told that our Constitution - the Constitution of the United States-is a mere experiment. Sir, I deny it utterly; and he that says so shows me that he has either not studied at all, or studied to very little purpose, the history and genius of our institutions. The great cause of their prosperous results - a cause which every one of the many attempts since vainly made to imitate them, on this continent or in Europe, only demonstrates the more clearly-is precisely the contrary. It is because our fathers made no experiments, and had no experiments to make, that their work has stood. They were forced, by a violation of their historical, hereditary rights under the old common law of their race, to dissolve their connection with the mother country. But the whole constitution of society in the States, the great body and bulk of their public law, with all its maxims and principles, in short, all that is republican in our institutions, remained, after the Revolution, and remains now, with some very subordinate modifications, what it was from the beginning.

Our written constitutions do nothing but consecrate and fortify the "plain rules of ancient liberty," handed down with Magna Charta, from the earliest history of our race. It is not a piece of paper, Sir

It is not a few austractions engrossed on parchment, that make free Governments. No, Sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed on the neart of the citizen: THE WORD, if I may use the expression without irreverence, MUST BECOME FLESH. You must have a whole People trained, disciplined bred, - yea, and born, as our fathers were, to institutions like ours. Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, that Magna Charta of a more enlightened age, had been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke and his immortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, and we have not gone one step beyond them. They brought these maxims of civil liberty, not in their libraries, but in their souls; not as philosophical prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of conduct; as a symbol of public duty and private right, to be adhered to with religious fidelity; and the very first pilgrim that set his foot upon the rock of Plymouth stepped forth a LIVING CONSTITUTION, armed at all points to defend and to perpetuate the liberty to which he had devoted his whole being.

163. EMOTIONS ON RETURNING TO THE UNITED STATES, 1837.- - Legaré.

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SIR, I dare not trust myself to speak of my country with the rapture which I habitually feel when I contemplate her marvellous history. But this I will say, that, on my return to it, after an absence of only four years, I was filled with wonder at all I saw and all I heard. What is to be compared with it? I found New York grown up to almost double its former size, with the air of a great capital, instead of a mere flourishing commercial town, as I had known it. I listened to accounts of voyages of a thousand miles in magnificent steamboats on the waters of those great lakes, which, but the other day, I left sleeping in the primeval silence of nature, in the recesses of a vast wilderness; and I felt that there is a grandeur and a majesty in this irresistible onward march of a race, created, as I believe, and elected, to possess and people a Continent, which belong to few other objects, either of the moral or material world.

We may become so much accustomed to such things that they shall make as little impression upon our minds as the glories of the Heavens above us; but, looking on them, lately, as with the eye of the stranger, I felt, what a recent English traveller is said to have remarked, that, far from being without poetry, as some have vainly alleged, our whole untry is one great poem. Sir, it is so; and if there be a man that can think of what is doing, in all parts of this most blessed of all lands to embellish and advance it, who can contemplate that living mass of intelligence, activity and improvement, as it rolls on, in its sure and steady progress, to the uttermost extremities of the West, — who can see scenes of savage desolation transformed, almost with the suddenness of enchantment, into those of fruitfulness and beauty, crowned with flourishing cities, filled with the noblest of all popula tions, if there be a man, I say, that can witness all this, passing under his very eyes, without feeling his heart beat high, and his

Imagination warmed and transported by it, be sure, Sir, that the raptures of song exist not for him; he would listen in vain to Tasso or Camoëns, telling a tale of the wars of knights and crusaders, or of the discovery and conquest of another hemisphere.

164. IN FAVOR OF PROSECUTING THE WAR, 1813.- Henry Clay.

WHEN the administration was striving, by the operation of peaceful measures, to bring Great Britain back to a sense of justice, the Gentlemen of the opposition were for old-fashioned war. And, now they have got old-fashioned war, their sensibilities are cruelly shocked, and all their sympathies lavished upon the harmless inhabitants of the adjoining Provinces. What does a state of war present? The united energies of one People arrayed against the combined energies of another; a conflict in which each party aims to inflict all the injury it can, by sea and land, upon the territories, property, and citizens of the other, subject only to the rules of mitigated war, practised by civilized Nations. The Gentlemen would not touch the continental provinces of the enemy; nor, I presume, for the same reason, her possessions in the West Indies. The same humane spirit would spare the seamen and soldiers of the enemy. The sacred person of his Majesty must not be attacked, for the learned Gentlemen on the other side are quite familiar with the maxim that the King can do no wrong. Indeed, Sir, I know of no person on whom we may make war, upon the principles of the honorable Gentlemen, but Mr. Stephen, the celebrated author of the orders in council, or the board of admiralty, who authorize and regulate the practice of impressment!

The disasters of the war admonish us, we are told, of the necessity of terminating the contest. If our achievements by land have been less splendid than those of our intrepid seamen by water, it is not because the American soldier is less brave. On the one element, organization, discipline, and a thorough knowledge of their duties, exist, on the part of the officers and their men. On the other, almost everything is yet to be acquired. We have, however, the consolation that our country abounds with the richest materials, and that in no instance, when engaged in action, have our arms been tarnished.

An honorable peace is attainable only by an efficient war. My plan would be, to call out the ample resources of the country, give them a judicious direction, prosecute the war with the utmost vigor, зtrike wherever we can reach the enemy, at sea or on land, and negotiate the terms of a peace at Quebec or at Halifax. We are told that England is a proud and lofty Nation, which, disdaining to wait for danger, meets it half way. Haughty as she is, we once triumphed over her; and, if we do not listen to the councils of timidity and despair, we shall again prevail. In such a cause, with the aid of Providence, we must come out crowned with success; but, if we fail, let us fail like men, lash ourselves to our gallant tars, and expire together in oue common struggle, fighting for FREE TRADE AND SEAMEN'S RIGHTS!

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