Revolution, when, lifted above ordinary mortals by the superhuman power of his eloquence, he exclaimed against delay when the chains of colonial bondage were clanking upon our shores, and within hearing of the patriots. The cords and sinews of the Government are snapping around us, and men are-boasting that it is their hands which sever them. And yet there are no arrests for treason, as there ought to be, and would be, if the laws were "faithfully executed."

I have said before, and repeat again, that my hope is not in the President, not in the army or navy, but in the PEOPLE, who are a power above them all, and who will hold to a fearful accountability all who are unfaithful to their country. The blessings of this Union have dropped like the rains from heaven upon them, and they will see to its protection. It is of more value than all the population which it now contains. Born of the struggles of the Revolution and baptized in the blood of a noble ancestry, it is committed to them to enjoy and to transmit. My countrymen, you will preserve and guard it as it is. It has safely conducted you thus far, and you should trust it still. Should you ever entertain the thought or purpose of destroying it, you will bitterly curse that day and moment when your thresholds and firesides are sprinkled with the blood of your wives and children.

Hon. Edward Joy Morris, 1861.

AGAINST ALTERING THE CONSTITUTION.

I DESIRE to get it distinctly before the House, if I can, that whether compromises are, in the nature of things, desirable and necessary or not, still, at the present time, it is wholly improper and utterly perilous to the country, to enter into any compromise whatever. Every nation has some nucleus thought, some central idea, which they enshrine, and around which they cluster and fasten. The old Roman citizen had his Capitol and his Pantheon; France has her Napoleon and military glory; England has her constitutional monarchy; and the old Jews had their temple and shekinah. American people, sir, have this one central idea or thought, embalmed and enshrined as a nucleus thought, around which they all cluster, and to which they all adhere with a spirit of superstitious idolatry: the Union, the Constitution, the flag of their country, are a sort of trinity, to which the American people pay political homage and worship.

The

And now, I insist, in this time of peril, of agitation and

rebellion, it is no time to tamper with that holy instrument around which all American hearts cluster, and to which they cling with the tenacity of a semi-religious attachment. Do this, and by and by Pennsylvania, if she cannot have protection for her coal and iron, which is her negro, will dissolve the Union. If New York is denied free trade, she will encircle the brow of her mayor with the diadem and place the sceptre in his hand. If Massachusetts fails to obtain her fishing bounties, she will secede. If Maine cannot have protection to her lumber and fishing interests, she will dissolve the Union. Michigan, I believe, wants the St. Clair flats cleared; and if you do not comply with her wishes in this regard, she will throw herself upon her sovereignty, dissolve the Union, and shed so much blood that the ensanguined tide shall pour over Niagara's rocks, and the fishermen at the mouth of the St. Lawrence will be startled with the reddened ripple around the prows of their boats, as was the mariner on the Mediterranean when the waters of Egypt were turned into blood. Illinois wants protection for her beef; or, what is more likely, she will not consent to pay tribute to Pennsylvania every time she shoes a horse or sharpens a plow. Oregon demands the payment of her war debt, or she will throw off her allegiance. California demands the building of a Pacific railroad, or she will erect a Pacific republic. And so, sir, this grand fabric of our Government, baptized in our fathers' blood, and handed down to us to be in turn bequeathed to our children, is at the beck and mercy of any State that is disaffected or displeased in regard to some federal legislation, or, more preposterous still, in reference to some State enactments. We are like sea-weed, waifs on the ocean, without anchorage, with no common rallying point around which to cluster, where our hearts can centre, and where we can say, "In life or death, in weal or woe, sunshine or storm, we are for the flag of our country, our Constitution, and our Union." In this the hour of our peril, whatever may be our dissensions, it is unpatriotic and unstatesmanlike to place all the glories of the past, all the immense and varied interests of the present, and all the glorious hopes of the future, at the mercy and caprice of any one State in this Union. I think it is the highest statesmanship now, here, in this very year of our Lord 1861, to settle this question, without compromise, without concession, without conciliation: Have we a Government that is permanent and fixed, and that will protect and shelter us?

Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1861.

PLEA FOR THE UNION.

MR. PRESIDENT, I have designedly dwelt so long on the probable effects of disunion upon the safety of the American people as to leave me little time to consider the other evils which must follow in its train. But, practically, the loss of safety involves every other form of public calamity. When once the guardian angel has taken flight, everything is lost.

Dissolution would not only arrest, but extinguish the greatness of our country. Even if separate confederacies could exist and endure, they could severally preserve no share of the common prestige of the Union. If the constellation is to be broken up, the stars, whether scattered widely apart or grouped in smaller clusters, will thenceforth shed forth feeble, glimmering and lurid lights. Nor will great achievements be possible for the new confederacies. Dissolution would signalize its triumph by acts of wantonness which would shock and astound the world. It would provincialize Mount Vernon, and give this Capitol over to desolation at the very moment when the dome is rising over our heads that was to be crowned with the statue of Liberty. After this there would remain for disunion no act of stupendous infamy to be committed. No petty confederacy that shall follow the United States can prolong, or even renew, the majestic drama of national progress. Perhaps it is to be arrested because its sublimity is incapable of continuance. Let it be so, if we have indeed become degenerate. After Washington, and the inflexible Adams, Henry, and the peerless Hamilton, Jefferson, and the majestic Clay, Webster, and the acute Calhoun, Jackson, the modest Taylor, and Scott, who rises in greatness under the burden of years, and Franklin, and Fulton, and Whitney, and Morse, have all performed their parts, let the curtain fall.

While listening to these debates, I have sometimes forgotten myself in marking their contrasted effects upon the page who customarily stands on the dais before me, and the venerable Secretary who sits behind him. The youth exhibits intense but pleased emotion in the excitement, while at every irreverent word that is uttered against the Union the eyes of the aged man are suffused with tears. Let him weep no more. Rather rejoice, for yours has been a lot of rare felicity. You have seen and been a part of all the greatness of your country, the towering national greatness of all the world. Weep only you, and weep with all the bitterness of anguish, who are just stepping on the threshold of life; for

that greatness perishes prematurely, and exists not for you, nor for me, nor for any that shall come after us.

The public prosperity! how could it survive the storm? Its elements are industry in the culture of every fruit; mining of all the metals; commerce at home and on every sea; material improvement that knows no obstacle and has no end; invention that ranges throughout the domain of nature; increase of knowledge as broad as the human mind can explore; perfection of art as high as human genius can reach; and social refinement working for the renovation of the world. How could our successors prosecute these noble objects in the midst of brutalizing civil conflict? What guarantee will capital invested for such purposes have, that will outweigh the premium offered by political and military ambition? What leisure will the citizen find for study or invention, or art, under the reign of conscription; nay, what interest in them will society feel when fear and hate shall have taken possession of the national mind? Let the miner in California take heed; for its golden wealth will become the prize of the nation that can command the most iron. Let the borderer take care; for the Indian will again lurk around his dwelling. Let the pioneer come back into our denser settlements; for the railroad, the post-road, and the telegraph, advance not one furlong farther into the wilderness. With standing armies consuming the substance of our people on the land, and our navy and our postal steamers withdrawn from the ocean, who will protect or respect, or who will even know by name our petty confederacies? The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediterranean. All the world wondered at it, and talked of it. Salvos of artillery, from forts and shipping in the harbor, saluted its flag. Princes and princesses and merchants paid it homage, and all the people blessed it as a harbinger of hope for their own ultimate freedom. I imagine now the same noble vessel again entering the same haven. The flag of thirty-three stars and thirteen stripes has been hauled down, and in its place a signal is run up, which flaunts the device of a lone star or a palmetto tree. Men ask, "Who is the stranger that thus steals into our waters ?" The answer contemptuously given is, "She comes from one of the obscure republics of North America. Let her pass on."

Hon. Wm. H. Seward, 1861.

COMPROMISE UNTIMELY,

The

IF compromise were desirable, this is not the time to think of it. When the Constitution and laws are openly defied; when forts and arsenals are seized by rebels; when the flag of our country is no longer a protection to its citizens, but rather a target for treason, it is no time to compromise, not till treason is punished, our plundered property restored, and the stars and stripes planted again upon every fortress in the land. No people ever yet bought a permanent peace. hordes of Alaric returned to demand new tribute after they had expended the gold extorted from the fears of Rome. So, compromise now; and from this vantage-ground of precedent they will demand new and ever-increasing guarantees to slavery. It is full time that we met this subject like men, like legislators acting for the future. We may shade our eyes with our hands, and swear that the sun is blotted from the heavens, yet there it is; we may compromise now, and tell others, and try to believe ourselves, that it is a finality, but who does not know that the disease is yet left to spread and rankle, and finally to break out with deadly virulence.

What a lamentable picture do we now present to the world. Citizens are seized, scourged, murdered; armed bands of traitors capture forts and arsenals; they fire upon our flag, and flaunt defiance in our very faces; and yet Government, we are told—and told, too, by Northern men on this floor-Government is powerless; we cannot enforce the laws. What to me is singular is, that these very men who now deny the power of Government to vindicate its laws are the men who talk loudest and longest about law and order whenever a fugitive, man or woman, is to be returned to slavery. Then law is a sacred thing, and its enforcement the highest duty; but when law is invoked to arrest treason and robbery, then we are asked if we intend to resort to coercion. Is not coercion the essence of all government? Not the coercion of unfeeling, intangible State organizations; but the coercion of men who are responsible to the law.

How long since our Government became so feeble, so averse to force? When Anthony Burns was seized in Boston, Government did not stand and hesitate. The army and navy were proffered at once; and when, in the gray of the morning, he was marched down to the wharf, to be sent back to slavery, he was escorted by a band of soldiers. There was coercion; Government was then prompt as thought a very giant in the presence of that poor, weak