THE skilful burin of our engraver has most happily transcribed the grave, expressive features which the faithful pencil of the sun, through the wonderful process of the Daguerreotype, had caught from the living face of this eminent statesman; and we propose to illustrate the artist's labor by a sketch of the character of its subject, copied from the no less truthful impression which Mr. Frelinghuysen's life and labors, political and philanthropic, have made upon the minds and hearts of his countrymen.

Mr. Frelinghuysen was not only born in New Jersey, but, by all ancestral associations, is connected with the most patriotic events in her history. His father, Frederick Frelinghuysen, at the early age of twenty-two a delegate from that state to the Continental Congress of 1775, in 1777 resigned this elevated station of honor in his country's councils, to take a position of danger in her battlefields, served with distinction as captain of a volunteer corps of artillery, at Monmouth and at Trenton, and afterwards was actively engaged, throughout the war, as colonel in the Somerset militia. After the restoration of peace, the warm gratitude of his fellow-citizens bestowed upon him, in quick succession, the political honors of their state, and, in 1793, elected him to a seat in the Senate of the United States. Seldom has a richer inheritance of public service and of public honor been bequeathed by a father, and never has it descended to a worthier heir.

Theodore Frelinghuysen was born at the village of Millstone, in the county of Somerset, on the 28th of March, 1787, and is now in his 58th year. He prepared for college at the school of the Rev. Dr. Finley, since distinguished as the author of the noble scheme of African colonization, of which his scholar has proved so eminent an advocate; and, in 1801, was graduated at Princeton, with the highest honors of his class. Mr. Frelinghuysen pursued his professional studies, for some years, in the office of an elder brother, and completed them under the auspices of the celebrated Richard Stockton, in 1808, when

he attained his majority, and was admitted to the bar.

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In a profession whose honors and emoluments, when rightly sought, are seldom sought in vain, Mr. Frelinghuysen rapidly reached eminence. character of his reputation as a lawyer, and the substantial grounds upon which it rested, are well expressed in the language of one familiar with them:

"The eloquence by which the forensic efforts of Mr. Frelinghuysen were distinguished; his voice, clear, mellow, and full; his manly appearance, brilliant imagination, vehement declamation, and fine flow of language, together with his acute knowledge of human nature, accurate legal acquirements, strong reasoning powers, and stern adherence to right, rendered Mr. Frelinghuysen the most popular advocate at the bar of eastern New Jersey. His consistent morality in his profession, his scorn for petty artifice and chicanery, his desire to settle rather than protract disputes, and strict integrity in his conduct of legal difficulties, won for him such a reputation for honesty, that his brother lawyers soon complained that juries would believe any thing Mr. Frelinghuysen contended for, simply because he did so."

Mr. Frelinghuysen's devotion to his profession was not such, however, as to preclude him from the adoption and maintenance of decided political opinions, and, with the practical energy of which his father had set him so noble an example, in the progress of the last war he raised and commanded a company of volunteers. In 1817, by the free choice of a legislative body, of which a majority held political sentiments at variance with his own, he was appointed attorneygeneral, a post of honor and trust which he held until 1826, when he obeyed the high behest of his state, to represent it in the United States Senate. Before this time, and in 1826, he had declined a seat upon the bench of the supreme court of New Jersey, to which the legislature had elected him.

With his election to the United States Senate, the career of Mr. Frelinghuysen upon the broad field of national politics commences, and a rapid survey of that

career will display, in the clearest light, the eminent qualities for the service of the state which he possessed; his thorough devotion to the best interests of the entire country, his ready sacrifice of selfish and sectional feelings to the general welfare, and his fearless maintenance of the high demands of virtue and religion, amid the strife and tumult of party warfare, and all the engrossing

anxieties of secular concerns.

As the earnest, scrupulous, and uncompromising preserver of national faith, Mr. Frelinghuysen, amid obloquy and derision, sustained the cause of the Indians, and strove to stay the tide of events which was sweeping away "the ancient landmarks" of this feeble and decaying people; as the firm and conscientious conservator of national morality, he sought to restore somewhat of the strictness of primitive observance which our ancestors accorded to the Christian Sabbath, to encourage its honor among the citizens, by its respectful recognition by the state, and, at least, to protect its solemn rest from governmental desecration; and as the Christian statesman, who recognises the finger of God amid the affairs of men, and would avert national calamity by national humiliation, he seconded and eloquently supported Mr. Clay's resolution for a national fast, in the season of the cholera, which passed the Senate by a vote of thirty to thirteen. In all the great questions which regarded as well the substantial and important commercial and industrial interests of the country, as the first duties of national faith and national gratitude, Mr. Frelinghuysen, while a member of the Senate, took a position equally prominent and decided. In the debate which took place upon the extension of the pension system, and which resulted in its establishment on its present patriotic basis-a measure in opposition to which Mr. Polk occupied a bad eminence, Mr. Frelinghuysen expressed himself in a strain which, for the union of practical sense, warm sympathy, and broad national views, has been rarely surpassed in the records of deliberative eloquence. In exposing the blemishes existing in the pension system, even as improved by the law of 1828, and urging the removal of these stains upon our national gratitude, in reply to Mr. Hayne of South Carolina, Mr. Frelinghuysen remarked:

"But there were two defects in the systom, even as thus liberalized. In the first

place, it exacted the humiliating confession of absolute poverty. It required of the aged veteran that he should publicly, and in the presence of the sons by the side of whose fathers he had fought and suffered, expose the wretchedness of his condition; pauperism, and swear to it himself. I that he should produce the proof of his have seen these worthies, in our public courts of justice, exhibit the inventory of their poverty, down to the items of cups

and saucers, and I have felt humbled for my country. Sir, a noble spirit would sometimes exclaim: 'I will die in want first! If my country exacts such ignoble conditions, let her withhold the miserable pittance.' And who, sir, of this Senate, does not honor the sentiment ? It has been honored and vindicated by the manly feeling of this great community. Public opinion would not longer brook such terms of national honor and gratitude; and, by the concurring indications of legislatures and people, we are invoked to relax these hard conditions. And should a few partake of a favor that do not need it, better so, than that even one deserving relic of times so dearly cherished should go down to the dust neglected and forgotten.

"But, sir, there was another and equally substantial objection to the present sys

tem.

It discriminates most invidiously between the troops of the regular line and the militia. The latter could not perceive the reasons for such difference, when they remembered that they had fought as bravely, and bled as freely, as any soldiers of the American army. The honorable senator (Mr. Hayne) has said that the camp was the place of safety. If that were so, it must have been the camp of the regular forces, and not the uncertain, ever-changing quarters of a partisan corps, whose tents were raised to-day, only to be struck tomorrow, to repel the sudden incursions of a prowling and mercenary horde. Sir, the gentleman also urged that the men at home and on their farms suffered most severely by dangers and depredations; and such, Mr. President, were precisely the exigences of the militia-they were the yeo. manry of the country, who were often summoned from their ploughs at a moment's warning, to fly to the defence of their neighborhoods, and reclaim the plunder that in an unexpected hour the enemy had rifled from their dwellings and their farms. These were the men who felt the distresses of a terror, alarm, and confusion to the fireside; cruel and relentless warfare, that brought and who, amid all that long, harassing, and doubtful conflict, stood firm to the cause, and never flinched from their purposes. In personal privations they suffered quite as severely, and, in the sacrifice of

South American independence; on the great scheme of the Colonization Society; and last, not least, his conduct with regard to the public lands, and you behold the same manly, fearless, able, and upright pursuit of the broad, old-fashioned path of national and social happiness. There are no shifts or truckling to circumstances about himno feeling the wind, or bending even to the storm-this least of all; for if ever the Roman firmness of Cato is more than usual in his conduct, it is when any attempt is made to drive him from his course. In short, my dear sir, I know no man in the country who has so much of soul mingled with politics as Mr. Clay. They call him ambitious. He is ambitious; but it is for the welfare of his country-that all her people, through all her ranks to the humblest cabin, may enjoy the blessings of peace, industry, and enterprise; and that he may be the honored instrument of promoting those great purposes, I do ardently hope that he may soon receive the exalted testimony of the Union to his public worth as a statesman, and the steady fiend of liberty in its broadest relations."

We shall make but two further extracts from the political speeches of Mr. F., the one indicating his views of the paramount obligations of the Constitution, delivered on occasion of "the removal of the deposites," in Jan., 1834, and the other exhibiting the soundness of his opinions respecting the powers and duties of the general government and the several States in the matter of slavery.

"In the language of Mr. Jefferson, and according to the soundest philosophy of politics, the great mass of the American people have always been, and now are, 'all Federalists, and all Republicans.' It is the federalism of the Constitution that I hon. or the system of fundamental law, as expounded by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, and administered by Washington and most of his successors. I never drank at any other fountain, and wish to follow no other guide. And however, in seasons of tranquillity, when the sun shines brightly, and the waters are calm, we may venture to contemn or neglect these good old principles; when tempests begin to muster when the highways are broken up, and the billows of convulsion break over us and around us, then, sir, when every face is sad, and every heart is heavy, we almost instinctively seek refuge and guidance in our Federal Constitution; we will then follow no other leader; it is the only shield that affords security. It is, indeed, sir, a copious and perennial fountain; copious, to supply all the social and political wants of this

great confederacy, and of vital energy, fully adequate to impart its rich benefits still wider, as the lines of our Union shall expand and encompass many more noble States. Yes, sir, far as the intrepid enterprise of our people shall urge the tide of emigration toward the setting sun, until all over the valleys of the West freemen shall rejoice in their blessings, and not an unoccupied acre remain on which to raise a cabin or strike a furrow.

"Mr. President, if in the benignant councils of a merciful Providence it shall please him to perpetuate our liberties, I believe that it will be through the agency of these principles. And should that melancholy crisis come to us, as I fear it may, as it has come to all past republics, when the people of this Union shall reject the control of fixed principles, and seek to break away from the government of laws, then, indeed, sir, will the hopes of our enemies, and all the fears of our friends, mect in the catastrophe of constitutional liberty, and our 'sun shall go down while it is yet day.'"

The following remarks upon slavery as existing in our political system, represent the true constitutional doctrine as held by the great body of sound thinkers on either side of the Potomac.

"It is universally agreed that, by the principles of our confederation, the internal

concerns of each State are left to its own exclusive cognizance and regulation, and the Federal Government of the United States cannot lawfully legislate on the subject of slavery, as it exists in the several States.

"Prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the thirteen States were separate and independent governments. There was no political bond to which was given, by concession, the power of control: the State of Massachusetts, for instance, possessed no more right to interfere with the relation of master and slave in Carolina, than it had to interfere with the relation of prince and serf in Russia. When the Constitution was framed, no such right was acquired or could be obtained; and a subsequent provision was ingrafted, which was merely declaratory of the necessary intendment of the instrument, that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' The precise extent of these reserved rights has, in many particulars, been the subject of grave debate; but that they include the right of interfering in the relations of master and slave, no one has had the hardihood to pretend. Such terms as the States respectively chose to insist upon must necessarily have been acceded to, or

the whole compact remains inoperative; and, at all events, the slaves of the South, by its adoption, were placed in no worse situation than before, and, in many respects, much better. Nothing of an unkind or uncharitable character is attributable, therefore, to the Constitution-to those who framed, or to those who adopted it. Interests were contemplated and protected in which our black population participated, and of which they are now reaping, slowly but surely, the favorable fruits.

"What the political action is which the Constitution PRESCRIBES for the removal of slavery, we are yet to learn; nor is it easy to imagine a federal principle adequate to that result, and, at the same time, compatible with the sovereignty of each State to legislate exclusively on the subject, and the disclaimer of any right of Congress, under the present national compact, to interfere with any of the slave States on this momentous subject.

"When, therefore, we are urged to the

immediate abolition of slavery, the answer is very conclusive, that duty has no claims where both the right and the power to exercise it are wanting. The door is shut upon us here; nor could we open it but by a violence destructive of public harmony, and probably fatal to our National Union."

In 1835 Mr. F. was succeeded in the Senate by a gentleman of different political opinions, in accordance with those of the party then dominant in the New Jersey legislature. He returned to his native State, quietly resumed the practice of law, and, beloved and admired by his fellow-citizens of every sect and party, seemed to have retired forever from the political service of his country. In 1838 he became the Chancellor of the University of New York, and transferred his residence to that city. In this position, the dignified head of a learned university, the nomination of the Baltimore Convention of May, 1844, found him, and called him to the mighty conflict which is now dividing the land. For this conflict, and to achieve success in it, Mr. F. needed not to furbish up any arms of

party strife, grown rusty by disuse ;when in the heat of the fight, and in the ardor of youth, he had need only of the armor of truth and the weapons of peace, and with these, amid his scholastic retirement, and in the serene vigor of his mature age, he was still girt about. To this nomination the whole country responded with enthusiasm, and Mr. Frelinghuysen, with the graceful ease of the practical statesman, assumed the post of honor and trust which the great Whig party had assigned him, as cheerfully and as modestly as he had before labored in its ranks.

In all valuable movements for the improvement of the condition of our race, Mr. F. has always been earnest and active. In the cause of popular education, in the promotion of temperance, in the relief and improvement of imprisoned felons, in the diffusion of the Bible, he has ever been a laborious coadjutor with kindred spirits throughout the land; and at this moment he presides over the largest, most enlightened, and most comprehensive scheme of benevolence, and guides the deliberations of the most learned and honored body of philanthropists, to which our country has given birth.*

We cannot but congratulate not only the Whig party, but the whole people of these United States, upon the nomination of Mr. Frelinghuysen for the Vice-Presidency. The country has been prolific of political genius and oratorical talent; the various and vast systems of public philanthropy which this present century has nurtured and matured, have produced many men of eminent ability, and as eminent self-devotion; the benign influences of our social institutions have fostered in many private citizens the most dignified and beautiful of personal virtues, and made their possessors an honor and an ornament to their kind; but we challenge the list of living men of worth for the name of one who unites in so high a measure the valuable qualities of a statesman, a scholar, a Christian, and a man as Theodore Frelinghuysen.