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people." Thus, as Madison has truly said, are we "responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society." Ours is not the duty of forming, but preserving. The fathers were faithful to every exigency, by which God created it; we are responsible for a like faithfulness to every exigency, by which He would preserve and perpetuate it. To such fidelity the past urges, the future calls, and the highest law commands us. Evils and defects within our Union we may well and earnestly seek to remove, by the development and operation of the principles upon which it rests. But whosoever lays his hand upon the fabric itself, or seeks, by whatever means, or under whatever pretence, or from whatever source, to undermine its foundations, is treacherous to humanity, false to liberty, and, more than all, culpable to God.

This is the inference of duty. To its performance hope, by its smile, encourages us. All efforts for the dissolution of our Union will be as disastrously unsuccessful as they are singularly criminal. Never in its existence has it been more earnestly and truly performing its appropriate work than now. A people, in the aggregate happy and blessed as the sun shines upon, repose in its protection. Every rolling tide brings to its shores multitudes seeking its shelter. Each receding wave carries back to the people they have left its liberalizing influence. Rising midway of the continent, and reaching to either ocean, it throws over both its radiant and cheering light. Intently the struggling nations contemplate its no longer doubtful experiment. Moral and religious truth are penetrating every part of its vast domain, and planting, in the very footsteps of the first settlers, the church, the school, and the college. Its Christian missionaries have girdled the globe with their stations, and in all of them heroic men and women, under its protection, with the religion of Jesus, are silently diffusing the principles of American liberty. Already a nation in the far-off islands of the Pacific has been redeemed by them from barbarism, assumed its place among the powers of the earth, and the very last mails tell us is at this moment seeking admission to our republic. Thus meeting its grand purposes, it will not fall. Man alone has not reared it, the tabernacle of freedom, and man alone cannot

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prostrate it, or gently, beam by beam, take it down. Heavendirected in its formation and growth, while true to its origin it will be Heaven-protected in its progress and maturity. The stars of God will shine down kindly upon it, and angels on the beats of their silvery wings will linger and hover above it. firmly seated as ever in the affections of its citizens. its hardly-seen power, reposing in its prosperity, not stopping to contemplate the character of its origin, or to realize its transcendent purpose, men, for a moment, may cast its value, speculate on its duration, and even threaten its dissolution. In the administration of its affairs, conflicts of opinion will exist, sectional interests will become excited, and sometimes hostile. The views of ardent men will be maintained with the ardor in which they are held. A clear and fair field of combat will be left to error and truth. The largest freedom of discussion will be scrupulously preserved. In the consequent excitement there may sometimes seem to be danger to the Union itself. But in the hour of peril experience shows, and ever will show, that a whole people will rally to its support, and sink its foes beneath a weight of odium a lifetime cannot alleviate. The rain may descend, the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon it, it will not fall, for it is founded upon a rock. It rests upon guarantees stronger even than laws and compromises. For it our interests combine in overwhelming potency; around it cluster the most glorious associations of our history; in it the hopes of humanity are involved; to it our hearts cling with undying love; for it religion, liberty and conscience plead; and, beyond all, upon it, in its riper years, as in its infancy, the protection of God rests, a sheltering cloud for its fiercer day, a pillar of fire in its darker night.

THE NOBILITY OF LABOR.-O. Dewey.

WHY, in the great scale of things, is labor ordained for us? Easily, had it so pleased the great Ordainer, might it have been dispensed with. The world itself might have been a mighty

machinery for producing all that man wants. Houses might have risen like an exhalation,

"With the sound

Of dulcet symphonies, and voices sweet,
Built like a temple."

Gorgeous furniture might have been placed in them, and soft couches and luxurious banquets spread by hands unseen; and man, clothed with fabrics of nature's weaving, rather than with imperial purple, might have been sent to disport himself in those Elysian palaces.

But where, then, had been human energy, perseverance, patience, virtue, heroism? Cut off labor with one blow from the world, and mankind had sunk to a crowd of Asiatic voluptuaries.

Better that the earth be given to man as a dark mass, whereupon to labor. Better that rude and unsightly materials be provided in the ore-bed, and in the forest, for him to fashion in splendor and beauty. Better, not because of that splendor and beauty, but because the act of creating them is better than the things themselves; because exertion is nobler than enjoyment; because the laborer is greater and more worthy of honor than the idler.

Labor is Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. Let not the great ordinance be broken down. What do I say? It is broken down; and it has been broken down for ages. Let it, then, be built again; here, if anywhere, on the shores of a new world, of a new civilization.

But how, it may be asked, is it broken down? Do not men toil? it may be said. They do, indeed, toil; but they too generally do because they must. Many submit to it, as in some sort a degrading necessity; and they desire nothing so much on earth as an escape from it. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system, under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away.

Ashamed to toil! Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand, scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on

which mother Nature has embroidered mist, sun and rain, fire and steam, her own heraldic honors! Ashamed of those tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity! It is treason to nature, it is impiety to Heaven, — it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance! Toil, toil, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true nobility!

AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. — D. Webster.

WHO is there among us, that, should he find himself on any spot of the earth where human beings exist, and where the existence of other nations is known, would not be proud to say, I am an American! I am a countryman of Washington! I am a citizen of that republic which, although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there are none on the globe who have ears to hear and have not heard of it, who have eyes to see and have not read of it, who know anything and yet do not know, of its existence and its glory? And, gentlemen, let me now reverse the picture. Let me ask, Who there is among us, if he were to be found to-morrow in one of the civilized countries of Europe, and were there to learn that this goodly form of government had been overthrown, that the United States were no longer united, who is there whose heart would not sink within him? Who is there who would not cover his face for very shame?

At this very moment, gentlemen, our country is a general refuge for the distressed and the persecuted of other nations. Whoever is in affliction from political occurrences in his own country, looks here for shelter. Whether he be republican, flying from the oppression of thrones, or whether he be monarch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble and fall under or around him, he feels equal assurance that, if he get foothold on our soil, his person is safe, and his rights will be respected.

We have tried these popular institutions in times of great excitement and commotion, and they have stood substantially firm and steady, while the fountains of the great political deep have been

elsewhere broken up; while thrones, resting on ages of prescription, have tottered and fallen; and while, in other countries, the earthquake of unrestrained popular commotion has swallowed up all law, and all liberty, and all right together. Our government has been tried in peace, and it has been tried in war, and has proved itself fit for both. It has been assailed from without, and it has successfully resisted the shock; it has been disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the disturbance. It can stand trial, it can stand assault, it can stand adversity, it can stand everything but the marring of its own beauty, and the weakening of its own strength. It can stand everything but the effects of our own rashness and our own folly. It can stand everything but disorganization, disunion, and nullification.

HUMAN LIFE.-H. Greeley.

HUMAN life! how inspiring, how boundless the theme! Sadly, wildly has the poet sung of it; calmly, lucidly has the historian traced its meanderings; earnestly, gravely have the priest and the sage exposed and reproved its errors, from the birth of the race. The muse's story depicts it, the scholar's research illustrates, the statesman's harangue illumines and exalts. From the cradle over which the young mother bends with a novel sensation of wondering delight, to the bier around which all are melted in the brotherhood of a common sorrow, this life of ours is a marvel and a poem. The very vitality within us, the warm current flowing so impetuously, yet steadily, from centre to extremities, and returning to renew its ceaseless errand; the beating heart, the seething, working brain, the apt, instinctive eye and ear, can chemist or geologist, juggler or magician, show us wonders greater than these? The probing physiologist, the deep searcher into the hidden reason of things, begins by assuming the great mystery of all — life; for this he dare not hope to unravel. Not his the capacity or the hope to explain how or why it is; here he must content him with the simple fact IT IS.

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