treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears, does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight, rather. Sir, I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven; if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South; and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame,-may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrances of the past: let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder, they went through the Revolution: hand in hand, they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust,

are the growth-unnatural to such soils-of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts: she needs none. There she is,-behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history, the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill,and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever.

And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,-it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever of vigor it may retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall, at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest monuments of its own glory, on the very spot of its origin!—(Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Co., Boston.)

THE DEATH PENALTY

BY VICTOR HUGO

Gentlemen of the Jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my son,-it is myself, it is I-I, who for these twentyfive years have opposed capital punishment,-have contended for the inviolability of human life,-have committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce myself, Mr. Advocate General! I have committed it under all aggravated circumstances; deliberately, repeatedly, tenaciously. Yes, this old and absurd lex talionisthis law of blood for blood-I have combated all my lifeall my life, Gentlemen of the Jury! And, while I have breath, I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all my words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the crucifix; before that victim of the penalty of death, who sees and hears us; before that gibbet, to which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the generations, the human law nailed the Divine!

In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment and for writing and publishing which he is now on trial, in all that he has written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his infancy, I have inspired him. Gentlemen Jurors, the right to criticize a law, and to criticize it severely-especially a penal law—is placed beside the duty of amelioration, like the torch beside the work under the artisan's hand. The right of the journalist is as sacred, as necessary, as imprescriptible, as the right of the legislator.

What are the circumstances? A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is dragged, on a certain morning, to one of

our public squares. There he finds the scaffold! He shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die. He is young yet -only twenty-nine. Ah! I know what you will say,-"He is a murderer!" But hear me. Two officers seize him. His hands, his feet, are tied. He throws off the two officers. A frightful struggle ensues. His feet, bound as they are, become entangled in the ladder. He uses the scaffold against the scaffold! The struggle is prolonged. Horror seizes on the crowd. The officers,-sweat and shame on their brows, -pale, panting, terrified, despairing, despairing with I know not what horrible despair,-shrinking under that public reprobation which ought to have visited the penalty, and spared the passive instrument, the executioner, the officers strive savagely. The victim clings to the scaffold, and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn, his shoulders bloody,—still he resists. At length, after three-quarters of an hour of this monstrous effort, of this spectacle without a name, of this agony,-agony for all, be it understood,agony for the assembled spectators as well as for the condemned man,—after this age of anguish, Gentlemen of the Jury, they take back the poor wretch to his prison.

The People breathe again. The People, naturally merciful, hope that the man will be spared. But no,--the guillotine, tho vanquished, remains standing. There it frowns all day, in the midst of a sickened population. And at night, the officers, reinforced, drag forth the wretch again, so bound that he is but an inert weight,-they drag him forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading, howling for life, -calling upon God, calling upon his father and mother,for like a very child had this man become in the prospect of death, they drag him forth to execution. He is hoisted on the scaffold, and his head falls! And then through

every conscience runs a shudder. Never had legal murder appeared with an aspect so indecent, so abominable. All feel jointly implicated in the deed. It is at this very moment that from a young man's breast escapes a cry, wrung from his very heart, a cry of pity and of anguish, a cry of horror, a cry of humanity. And this cry you would punish! And in the face of the appalling facts which I have narrated, you would say to the guillotine, “Thou art right!" and to Pity, saintly Pity, "Thou art wrong!" Gentlemen of the Jury, it cannot be! Gentlemen, I have finished.

OUR RELATIONS TO ENGLAND

BY EDWARD EVERETT

Who does not feel, what reflecting American does not acknowledge, the incalculable advantages derived by this land out of the deep fountains of civil, intellectual, and moral truth, from which we have drawn in England? What American does not feel proud that his fathers were the countrymen of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke? Who does not know that, while every pulse of civil liberty in the heart of the British Empire beats warm and full in the bosom of our ancestors, the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity, with which the cause of free principles struggled into existence here, constantly found encouragement and countenance from the friends of liberty there? Who does not remember that, when the Pilgrims went over the sea, the prayers of the faithful British confessors, in all the quarters of their dispersion, went over with them, while their aching eyes were strained till the star of hope should go up in the