ing, spreading, and blackening every hour. The ground on which we stood seemed to heave and quake with the first throes of a convulsion that was to rend in fragments the last republic on earth.

2. Are we prepared now to break the bonds of peace and renew the war? I have said you have the power to do so, but I deny your right. I do not measure that right by the standard of law in a municipal court. I can not conceive any idea more ridiculous or contemptible, than that which finds no standard of moral and political duties and rights for a Christian, a private gentleman; or a statesman, except that which is applicable to a contest before a justice's court, or a nisi prius jury. No, sir, I appeal to a law in the bosom of man prior and paramount to this. I appeal to the South, where I know that law will be obeyed, and where I know I do not appeal in vain. I invoke its characteristic chivalry; I summon to my aid that sensitive honor which feels a "stain like a wound," which abhors deception and shudders at violated faith.

3. Will that South, which I am sure I have truly described, join in this odious infraction of its own treaty, and unite in this miserable war against the laboring thousands who have their all in its securities?—a war not waged with open force and strong hand-a war not waged to avenge insulted honor, but to recover the difference between five and ten cents duty upon a yard of cotton. I repeat, will they engage in such a war? Your approach to this battle is not heralded by the trumpet's voice; no, you are to steal into the dwelling of the poor, and boldly capture a mechanic's dinner! You are to march into the cottage of the widow and fearlessly confiscate the breakfast of a faetory girl, for the benefit of the planting and grain growing states of this mighty republic!

4. How little do they who have presented such arguments as these, in this report, know of the people of the South and West. The hardy race that have subdued the forests of the West, and in a green youth have constructed monuments of enterprise that shall survive the Pyramids, is not likely from merely sordid motives, to join in inflict

ing a great evil on any portion of our common country. The fearless pioneers of the West, whose ears are as familiar with the sharp crack of the Indian's rifle, and his wild war-whoop at midnight, as are those of your city dandies with the dulcet notes of the harp and piano-they, sir, are not the men to act upon selfish calculations and sinister inducements. They hold their rights by law, and they believe that compacts, expressed or implied, arising from individual engagements or public law, are to be kept and defended with their lives, if need be, and not to be broken at will, or regarded as the proper spirit of legislative or individual caprice.

THOS. CORWIN.

CXXII.-PATRIOTIC SELF-SACRIFICE.

1. I ROSE not to say one word which should wound the feelings of the president. The senator says, that, if placed in like circumstances, I would have been the last man to avoid putting a direct veto upon the bill, had it met my disapprobation; and he does me the honor to attribute to me high qualities of stern and unbending intrepidity. I hope, that in all that relates to personal firmness, all that concerns a just appreciation of the insignificance of human life-whatever may be attempted, to threaten or alarm a soul not easily swayed by opposition, or awed or intimidated by menace-a stout heart and a steady eye, that can survey, unmoved and undaunted, any mere personal perils that assail this poor, transient, perishing frame-I may, without disparagement, compare with other men.

2. But there is a sort of courage, which, I frankly confess I do not possess; a boldness to which I dare not aspire; a valor which I can not covet. I can not lay myself down n the way of the welfare and happiness of my country. That I can not, I have not the courage to do. I can not interpose the power with which I may be invested—a power conferred, not for my personal benefit, nor for my aggrandizement, but for my country's good-to check her onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough

-I am too cowardly, for that. I would not, I dare not, in the exercise of such a trust, lie down, and place my body across the path that leads my country to prosperity and happiness. This is a sort of courage widely different from that which a man may display in his private conduct and private relations. Personal or private courage is totally distinct from that higher and nobler courage which prompts the patriot to offer himself a voluntary sacrifice to his country's good.

3. Apprehension of the imputation of the want of firmness sometimes impels to the performance of rash and inconsiderate acts. It is the greatest courage to be able to bear the imputation of the want of courage. But pride, vanity, egotism, so unamiable and offensive in private life, are vices which partake of the character of crimes in the conduct of public affairs. The unfortunate victim of these passions can not see beyond the little, petty, contemptible circle of his own personal interests. All his thoughts are withdrawn from his country, and concentrated on his consistency, his firmness, himself. The high, the exalted, the sublime emotions of a patriotism, which, soaring toward heaven, rises far above all mean, low, or selfish things, and is absorbed by one soul-transporting thought of the good and the glory of one's country, are never felt in his impenetrable bosom. That patriotism which, catching its inspirations from the immortal God, and leaving at an immeasurable distance below all lesser, groveling, personal interests and feelings, animates and prompts to deeds of self-sacrifice, of valor, of devotion, and of death itself that is public virtue; that is the noblest, the sublimect of all public virtues !

HENRY CLAY.

CXXIII.-SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.

1. THE eulogium pronounced on the character of the state of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable

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member goes before me in regard for whatever of distin guished talents, or distinguished character, South Carolina. has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions-Americans all-whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by state lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the 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.

2. 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 happens 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 prejudices, 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 remembrance 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 shoul

der they went through the Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and feit 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.

3. 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 Hilland 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 Ameri can 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 vigor it may still 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. and on the very spot of its origin !

WEBSTEP..

CXXIV. THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON.

1. A GENTLEMAN, Mr. President, speaking of Cæsar's be nevolent disposition, and of the reluctance with which he had entered into the civil war, observes, "How long did he pause upon the brink of the Rubicon?" How came he to the brink of that river! How dared he cross it! Shall private men respect the boundaries of private property and