vicegerent on earth, than His Spirit in the breast of man, administering a government over his passions and propensities, according to the sacred statutes of Christianity. The republican, then, is not without his Prince; and loyalty to that Prince forbids that any ruler, either in the civil or spiritual realm, should be permitted to usurp His place. "Neither be ye called masters, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." Is there not in the spirit of this and similar passages, some warrant for our doctrine? and will it be deemed irreverent, then, to say that Jesus was the great apostle of democracy? He was eminently a man of the people. From the people he sprang-to the people, the " common people," he first brought his gift of immortality, and they "heard him gladly." It was the cause of the people-for "he came not to call the righteous"—that he carried on his loving heart to Calvary. And his last command to his disciples was to announce the conditions of the gospel and make a proffer of its blessings "to every creature" without distinction of class or clime.-R. R. R., 1847.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IDENTICAL IN PURPOSE.

HERE, then, my friends, behold the creed of freedom, and its great High Priest. Ought not he who would be a true disciple of the democratic faith, to worship also at the altar of Christianity? Tell me where, in all the schools of philosophy, you may attain that generous self-sacrificing devotion, which we have found so essential to the mission of the American scholar, the American citizen,-where, but in that school of morals, which declares, as its fundamental law and essential spirit, "None of us liveth to himself." Animated by such a principle, derived, on bended knee, from the great Fountain of all holy impulse, let us go forth, my brethren, to bear the ark of freedom through the world. Be it ours, not merely to abolish the disheartening barriers of social caste, to dismiss the hireling soldier, to spike the cannon, to bury the bayonet, to burn the gibbet, to strike the coffle from the slave, but to disenthrall the mind from ignorance and vice and raise the free soul's longing to the skies. In this glorious enterprise are harmonized our religious and our civic duties, and all the worthy purposes of life. It allies us to all the glorious family of the truly free, in earth and heaven. Lo, they wait for us-they watch us,-that mighty cloud of witnesses! They crowd the circumambient sky! Wash

ington, and the Fathers of '76-Luther, and the heroes of the Reformation-Paul, and the first martyrs in the cause! Oh, glorious brotherhood of liberty! They bend from their starry thrones! They beckon us! Aye, and God is with us! He will set his King upon his holy hill of Zion. To this do all the revolutions of the nations tend. "Thus saith the Lord God. Remove the diadem, and take off the crown; this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, until he come whose right it is: and I will give it him." He unrolls the blazing scroll of prophecy before us--and this is its golden inscription:

"FOR BRASS I WILL BRING GOLD, AND FOR IRON I WILL BRING SILVER, AND FOR WOOD BRASS, AND FOR STONES IRON; I WILL ALSO MAKE THY OFFICERS PEACE AND THY EXACTORS RIGHTEOUSNESS.

VIOLENCE SHALL NO MORE BE HEARD IN THY LAND, WASTING NOR DESTRUCTION WITHIN THY BORDERS, BUT THOU SHALT CALL THY WALLS SALVATION, AND THY GATES PRAISE.

THY PEOPLE SHALL BE ALL RIGHTEOUS; THEY SHALL INHERIT THE LAND FOREVER, THE BRANCH OF MY PLANTING, THE WORK OF MY HANDS, THAT I MAY BE glorified.

A LITTLE ONE SHALL BECOME A THOUSAND AND A SMALL ONE A STRONG NATION. I THE LORD WILL HASTEN IT IN HIS TIME."

Happy association! Christ and the genius of Liberty,— patriotism and evangelic zeal—the cause of country, and the cause of universal man. The cause is heaven-born; the glory of the Lord has already arisen upon it; and all the blessed influences of the universe are pledged to its success. With this triumphant thought we close.

"Yet may the moral still remain impressed,
To warm the patriot, or the pious breast.
Where'er aggression marches, may the brave
Rush unappalled, their father-land to save!
Where sounds of glad salvation are gone out
Unto all lands, as with an angel's shout,
May holy zeal its energies employ !

"Proceed auspicious and eventful day!
Banner of Christ thy ample folds display!
Let Atlas shout with Andes, and proclaim
To earth, and sea, and skies, a Saviour's name,
Till angel voices in the sound shall blend,
And one hosanna from all worlds ascend!"

R. R. R., 1847.

POWER OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT OVER SLAVERY.

SIR, in my humble judgment, the institution of slavery presents two questions totally distinct, and resting on entirely different grounds-slavery within the States, and slavery without the States. The General Government has no power, under the Constitution of the United States, to touch slavery within the States, except in the three specified particulars in that instrument; to adjust the subject of representation; to impose taxes when a system of direct taxation is made; and to perform the duty of surrendering, or causing to be delivered up, fugitive slaves, that may escape from service which they may owe in slave States, and take refuge in free States. And sir, I am ready to say that if Congress were to attack, within the States, the institution of Slavery, for the purpose of the overthrow or extinction of slavery, then, Mr. President, my voice would be for war; then would be made a case which would justify in the sight of God, and in the presence of the nations of the earth, resistance on the part of the slave States to such an unconstitutional and usurped attempt as would be made on the supposition which I have stated.

Then we should be acting in defence of our rights, our domicils, our property, our safety, our lives; and then, I think, would be furnished a case in which the slaveholding States would be justified by all considerations which pertain to the happiness and security of man, to employ every instrument which God or nature had placed in their hands to resist such an attempt on the part of the free States. And then, if unfortunately civil war should break out, and we should present to the nations of the earth the spectacle of one portion of this Union endeavoring to subvert an institution in violation of the Constitution and the most sacred obligations which can bind men; we should present the spectacle in which we should have the sympathies, the good wishes, and the desire for our success of all men who love justice and truth. Far different, I fear, would be our caseif unhappily we should be plunged into civil war-if the two parts of this country should be placed in a position hostile toward each other, in order to carry slavery into the new territories acquired from Mexico.

Mr. President, we have heard, all of us have read of the efforts of France to propagate--what, on the continent of Europe? Not slavery, sir; not slavery, but the rights of man; and we know the fate of her efforts in a work of that

kind. But if the two portions of this Confederacy should unhappily be involved in civil war, in which the efforts on I the one side would be to restrain the introduction of slavery into new territories, and on the other side to force its introduction there, what a spectacle should we present to the contemplation of astonished mankind! An effort not to propagate right, but I must say an effort to propagate wrong in the territories. It would be a war in which we should have no sympathy, no good wishes, and in which all mankind would be against us, and in which our own history, itself, would be against us; for, from the commencement of the revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this country.

I think then, there is this important distinction between slavery outside of the States and slavery inside of the States; that all outside is debatable, and upon which men may honestly and fairly differ, but which, decided however it may be, furnishes, in my judgment, no just occasion for breaking up this happy and glorious Union.

Hon. Henry Clay, 1850.

DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.

MR. President, I have said, what I solemnly believe, that dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inevitable; that they are convertible terms; and such a war as it would be, following a dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so ferocious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating-not even the wars of Greece, including those of the Commoners of England and the revolutions of France-none, none of them all would rage with such violence, or be characterized with such bloodshed and enormities as would the war which must succeed, if that event ever happens, the dissolution of the Union. And what would be its termination? Standing armies, and navies, to an extent stretching the revenues of each portion of the dissevered members, would take place. An exterminating war would follow-not, sir, a war of two or three years duration, but a war of interminable duration and exterminating wars would ensue, until, after the struggles and exhaustion of both parties, some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot, and solve the

problem of the capacity of man for self-government and crush the liberties of both the severed portions of this common empire. Can you doubt it?

Look at all history-consult her pages, ancient and modern-look at human nature; look at the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of war following upon the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that the final disposition of the whole would be some despot treading down the liberties of the people-the final result would be the extinction of this last and glorious light which is leading all mankind, who are gazing upon it, in the hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be diffused throughout the whole of the civilized world. Sir, can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted, in colors far too tame, of what the result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever occur? Sir, I implore gentlemen, I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all that they hold dear in this world--by all their love of liberty-by all their veneration for their ancestors-by all their regard for posterity--by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings-by all the duties which they owe to mankind—and by all the duties which they owe to themselves, to pause, solemnly to pause at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return in safety.

Finally, Mr. President, and in conclusion, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me, upon earth, that if the direful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I should not survive to behold the sad and heartrending spectacle.—Hon. Henry Clay, 1850.

THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

THE arrangement of God which makes a man's Conscience his guide to action, is beneficent every way.-It is beneficent for the Individual. The results will be seen in the end,-as with the Puritans in this country, as with the Huguenots in France, as with the persecuted band in the Waldensian valleys, in a purer piety; in a nobler self-devotion; in a