yourself-they are not fighting-do not disturb them—they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony— that man is not dead-he is only pausing! Lord help you, Sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, Sir, is nothing like fighting —there is no harm nor cruelty nor bloodshed in it, whatever it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment-to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to pause, in pure friendship!"

XIV. ADAMS'S SPEECH ON INDEPENDENCE.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

John Adams, second President of the United States, was a man of great vigor and directness. He was the most prominent advocate of the Declaration of Independence, in the Continental Congress. In the following extract, Daniel Webster utters what he thinks might naturally have been Mr. Adams's language while speaking on this theme. Some of the members of Congress were timid,—afraid of openly resisting the great power of England. They are stimulated here, by the most encouraging considerations, to go on and make the Declaration. The extract requires full volume, medium pitch, and somewhat slow speed:

We When we are

But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and · it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. shall make this a glorious, an immortal, day. in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judg ment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave

off as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment,-INDEPENDENCE NOW; AND INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!

XV.-CONSERVATISM.

EDWARD D. BAKER.

During the war of the great rebellion, between the years 1861 and 1865, the question of the abolition of slavery was vehemently and earnestly discussed. Many conservatives opposed the measure on account of the changes it would involve. In the following extract Mr. Baker, of Oregon, objects to this view, and urges abolition as the only means of restoring the Union:

The conservative asks-what is? That higher question -what ought to be? is above his capacity; and whenever he hears it put, he speaks of blasphemy and sacrilege. With undying belief in every dishonest conventional right that once gets hold on society, he has but a glimmering conception of right in itself. Timorous, short-sighted, lacking faith, not high in moral sense, the conservative element has performed but an inferior part in history. It has been made up at all times and in all countries, of men entertaining narrow and low views of truth, right, and duty. Civilization is mainly the product of the progressive element. The Hercynian woods and Mæotian bogs that have shaded and befouled the struggling civilization of the past, have been hewn down and drained by the strong arms of progressive men. Conservatism has done no such work, but opposed it with all its might, and on every occasion. When Moloch stood in the great court at Carthage, receiving through his hollow arms human victims into his fiery embrace, he was surrounded by conservatives, swearing by their grim-visaged god, and ready to smite any "destructive" who might question his divinity." And from that day to this, human society has nowhere taken an improving step forward, but in opposition to the protesting voice of conservatism. When our Saviour proclaimed the new gospel of truth, he was crucified by conservatism. When that gospel became corrupted by pagan admixtures,

conservatism opposed its purification. Luther horrified all the conservatives in the Christian world. When it was proposed in England to abolish the slave-trade, conservatism lifted its voice against the measure, and the island rang with denunciations of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Sharpe. When afterwards it was proposed to abolish slavery itself in the British West Indies, the burst of conservative indignation knew no bounds; and American conservatives have not yet ceased their snarling at that noble act of our English cousins. When the Reform Bill and the Catholic Emancipation Bill came before the British Parliament, these great and just measures for rooting out rotten boroughs, and giving equal liberty to Catholic subjects, were fought to the bitter end by conservatism. Sir Samuel Romilly, in his humane work of weeding out the old atrocities that disgraced the English criminal law, was opposed at every step by conservatism. Not a corruption has been overturned, not an iniquity has been cloven down in history, that has not fallen by the hands of progressive men, and died amid the general howl and lamentation of conservatives! And this same class is here to-day, true to its ancient instincts, and busy at its old work— here it is, locked hand in hand in defense of slavery; and that at a time when slavery is rioting in social ruin, and drunk with the blood of slain patriots!

XVI.-NEW ENGLAND AS A PART OF THE

UNION.

RICHARD YATES.

During the troubles attendant upon the great rebellion, those who sympathized with the South were in the habit of charging New England with having originated the difficulties, and of urging the separation of the six Eastern States from the Union. Mr. Yates, then Governor of Illinois, protests against this suggestion in the following words:

I regret that appeals are made to the masses, by a few public presses in the country, for separation from New Englana. Not a drop of New England blood flows in my veins; still, I should deem myself an object of commiseration and shame if I could forget her glorious history, if I could forget

that the blood of her citizens freely commingled with that of my own ancestors, upon those memorable fields which ushered in the dawn of civil and religious liberty. I do not propose to be the eulogist of New England; but she is indissolubly bound to us by all the bright memories of the past, by all the glory of the present, by all the hopes of the future. I shall always exult in the fact that I belong to a Republic in the galaxy of whose stars New England is among the brightest and the best. Palsied be the hand that would sever the ties which bind the East and West.

XVII. THE CONSTITUTION.

ANDREW JACKSON.

We have hitherto relied upon the Constitution as the perpetual bond of our Union. We have received it as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred love as the palladium of our liberties, and, with all the solemnities of religion, have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here, and our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defence and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing, a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection?

XVIII. THE VALUE OF OUR INSTITUTIONS TO FUTURE TIMES.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

The following is from a speech by Daniel Webster, delivered on the two-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. He has been speaking of the next succeeding centennial anniversary of the same event, when he breaks forth into the following magnificent apostrophe. It requires the fullest volume of voice :

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise, in your long succession, to fill the places. which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence, where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our human duration. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We wel come you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred and parents and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth.