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deeds and doings of Northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank.

Sir, who was he that disarmed the thunderer, wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove, calmed the troubled ocean, became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world-whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence; prominently assisted in moulding your free institutions; and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt till the last moment of recorded time? Who, sir, I ask, was he? A Northern laborer; a Yankee tallow chandler's son; a printer's runaway boy! And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, was he that, in the days of our Revolution, led forth a Northern army, yes, an army of Northern laborers, and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign invaders who was he?. A Northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith-the gallant General Greene; who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer, in the battles of our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these?

Sir, our country is full of the glorious achievements of Northern laborers. Where are Concord, and Lexington, and Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the North? And what, sir, has shed an imperishable renown on the never-dying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring, and patriotism, and sublime courage of Northern laborers? The whole North is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence of Northern laborers. Go, sir, go preach insurrection to men like these.

LXVII.-DISCUSSION OF WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

WM. C. JOHNSON.

It was a conflict, in my apprehension, more sublime than the warring of contending elements. It was a conflict of mind, whose mind met and subdued mind. The occurrence

to which I allude formed a new epoch in the history of this nation, and presented a spectacle of the highest sublimity I do not use the word "sublimity" in the august sense of the bookmen; of old ocean, when the elements fret its vast bosorn into fearful terror; of the grand prairie on fire, which forces the heavens to reflect its lurid light, and fills the mind with an idea of immensity of flame; of the pale and blue moun tain crag, which lifts its aspiring head to the heavens, as if to defy the terror of the lightning and the thunders; nor of the wide and headlong cataract, which precipitates itself from the fearful height above to the abyss below, dashes its angry waves into foam, and hangs its spray and its rainbow in the heavens as a trophy of its awful power and sublimity. I have seen all this; but there is a sublime spectacle which has struck me with more peculiar force, and one which reminds me more of the influence and power of Daniel Webster's great speech on that memorable occasion. It is the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, or the silent meeting of the Ohio with the Mississippi. There is no awful terror there which astonishes reflection; no dreadful noise that subdues the senses; but you see the meeting of mighty waters; you see a vast river swallowing up, without commotion, vast rivers; you see that great mother of waters flowing on in sullen and silent grandeur, as if it received no aid, as if it were unconscious that there were other streams. You are not amazed at its breadth, nor its depth, but you are awed at its quiet, sublime silence, and power. Your mind is not alarmed or astonished, but forced to reflect. It is thrown into a new and endless world of meditation. You behold a stream which has flown on from the beginning of the world, and will roll on through all time, which defies the control of all human power, and is the same, unchanged and unchangeable. Such was the moral power of the speech to which I allude-its calm and unostentatious power, its moral sublimity, which bore down all resistance, and forced is influence through all the channels of human thought. The doctrine of State supremacy had spread from town to town, from county to county, and from state to state. It rolled on like mighty waters, overleaping their banks from South to North, as each aspiring wave strove to overreach its predecessor in the anxious progress.

It was then that the reproach of being a Northern man was thrown upon Daniel Webster; he was accused-no matter

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how wrongfully, he was still accused with having been an accessory of the Hartford Convention, which was charged with having had a design of a dissolution of the Union: in the same breath he was called a consoladitionist, and a federalist, and an opposer of the war. Under such a cloud of prejudice he rose in his senate place, and by a mighty effort of mind, such as history furnishes but one parallel to, in its influence upon a nation, and that the master effort of the great Cicero, he dasled back the angry waters to their fountains, to flow on in future in their usual and well-defined courses. It was a victory more glorious than any won on the battle-field-a victory without carnage. It was the triumph of intellect controlling intellect, and staying physical hostilities by the moral force of reason and the sublime eloquence of wisdom.

LXVIII. ON THE PLATFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

FINALLY, the honorable member declares that he shall now march off, under the banner of State Rights! March off from whom? March off from what? We have been contending for great principles. We have been struggling to maintain the liberty, and to restore the prosperity of the country; we have made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the old flag, the true American flag, the Eagle, and the Stars and Stripes, waving over the chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off under the State Rights banner! Let him go. I remain. I am where I ever have been, and ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the general Constitution-a platform broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of the whole country-I shall ever be found. Intrusted with some part in the administration of that Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of those who formed it. Yes, sir, I would act as if our fathers, who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on us-as if I could see their venerable forms bending down to behold us, from the abodes above. I would act, too, sir, as if that long line of posterity were also viewing us, whose eye is hercal ter to scrutinize our conduct.

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors, and our posterity, having received this inheritance from the former, to transmit it to the latter, and feeling that if I am born for any good, in my day and generation, it is for the good of the whole country, no local policy, or local feeling, no temporary impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the Constitution and the Union. I move off, under no banner not known to the whole American people, and to their Constitu tion and laws. No, sir, these walls, these columns

I came into public life, sir, in the service of the United States. On that broad altar my earliest, and all my public vows, have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So far as depends on ary agency of mine, they shall continue United States; united in interest and in affection; united in everything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed their Union; united in war, for the common defence, the common renown and the common glory; and united, cornpacted, knit firmly together in peace, for the common prosperity and happiness of ourselves and our children.

LXIX-IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SEAMEN.

HENRY CLAY.

SIR, government has done too much in granting those paper protections. I can never think of them without being shocked. They resemble the passes which the master grants to his negro slave-"Let the bearer, Mungo, pass and repass without molestation." What do they imply? That Great Britain has a right to seize all who are not provided with them. From their very nature, they must be liable to abuse on both sides. If Great Britain desires a mark, by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from his mast-head should be the credentials of our seamen. There is no safety for us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule, that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies) are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the

gallant tars, who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; having taken you by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release you; but I cannot, my son, fight for you." If he did not consider this mere mockery, the poor tar would address her judgment, and say: "You owe me, my country, protection: I owe you, in return, obedience. I am no British subject; I am a native of old Massachusetts, where lived my aged father, my wife, my children. I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours?" Appealing to her passions he would continue: "I lost this eye in fighting under Truxton, with the Insurgente ; I got this scar before Tripoli; I broke this leg on board the Constitution, when the Guerriere struck."

I will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him protection.

In the

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HERE is the issue, clear as daylight. How will it be decided? Here is the end. Either the present Congress, at the next session, will abolish this law, or confirm it. former case, the South will be compelled to secede from the Union. She is driven into a corner where there is no escape. She knows it-she feels it-she declares it, and she will do it-she has no other course. Men of the North, will you sustain the course of your representatives in the last session of Congress? If you will, the Union is safe; if not, it is gone; and, be it remembered, now the issue is with you, and on your heads will fall the consequences. And when the final question is decided, and the Union is broken up, what will be the upshot of it on you, your families, your interests? Stop long enough to ask yourselves this question. The South will