Is it said that the Secretary of State was the author of Noah Webster's dictionary of the English language? Why, he could not write the first spelling-book that Noah Webster produced; and that is true. I am no man of letters, in the literary acceptation of that term. But it has sometimes happened in the course of my official duties, that I have been called upon to write a letter, and that duty I fulfil.

Webster, 1852.

REPUDIATION.

WHAT can be the debt of a State like Pennsylvania, that she should not be able to pay it-that she cannot pay it, if she will but take from her pocket the money that she has in it? England's debt is engrafted upon her very soil; she is bound down to the very earth by it; and it will affect England and the Englishmen to the fiftieth generation. But the debt of Pennsylvania-the debt of Illinois-the debt of any State in the Union, amounts not to a sixpence in comparison. Let us be AMERICANS-but let us avoid, as we despise, the character of an acknowledged insolvent community.

"You

What importance is it what other nations say to us, or what they think of us-if they can nevertheless say, don't pay your debts ?" Now, gentlemen, I belong to Massachusetts; but if I belonged to a deeply indebted State, I'd work these ten fingers to their stumps; I'd hold plough, I'd drive plough, I'd do both, before it should be said of the State to which I belonged, that she did not pay her debts. That's the true principle,-let us act upon it, let us go it," to its full extent! If it costs us our comforts, let us sacrifice our comforts; if it costs us our farms, let us mortgage our farms. But don't let it be said by the proud capitalists of England, "You don't pay your debts." "You Republican Governments don't pay your debts." Let us say to them, "WE WILL pay them,' "We will pay them to the uttermost farthing." That's my firm conviction of what we ought to do. That's my opinion, and water can't drown-fire can't burn it out of me. If America owes a debt, let her pay it, let her PAY IT. What I have is ready for the sacrifice. What you have I know would be ready for the sacrifice. At any rate, and at any sacrifice, don't let it be said on the exchanges of London or Paris, don't let it be said in any one of the proud monarchies of Europe, “America owes, and can't, or won't pay." God forbid! Let us pay—let us PAY. Webster, 1843.

COERCION.

FOR what purpose is the unlimited control of the purse and of the sword to be placed at the disposition of the executive? To make war against one of the free and sovereign members of this confederation, which the bill proposes to deal with, not as a State, but as a collection of banditti or outlaws; thus exhibiting the impious spectacle of this Government, the creature of the States, making war against the power to which it owes its own existence.

Do I say that the bill declares war against South Carolina? No! it decrees a massacre of her citizens ! War has something ennobling about it, and with all its horrors, brings into action the highest qualities, intellectual and moral. It was, perhaps, in the order of Providence, that it should be permitted for that very purpose. But this bill declares no war, except, indeed, it be that which savages wage; a war, not against the community, but the citizens of whom that community is composed. But I regard it as worse than savage warfare-as an attempt to take away life, under the color of law, without the trial by jury, or any other safeguard which the Constitution has thrown around the life of a citizen! It authorizes the President, or even his deputies, when they may consider the law to be violated, without the intervention of a court or jury, to kill without mercy or discrimination.

It has been said, by the Senator from Tennessee, to be a measure of peace! Yes, such peace as the wolf gives to the lamb, the kite to the dove! Such peace as Russia gives to Poland, or death to its victim! A peace by extinguishing the political existence of a State, by awing her into an al donment of the exercise of every power which constitutes her a sovereign community! It is to South Carolina a question of self preservation; and I proclaim it, that, should this bill pass, and an attempt be made to enforce it, it will be resisted at every hazard-even that of death itself!

Death is not the greatest calamity; there are others still more terrible to the free and brave, and among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons, who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives in defense of the State, and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary! It never can be, unless this Government is resolved to bring the question to extremity; when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty-to die nobly!-Calhoun.

CHILDREN OF DECEASED OFFICERS.

I DIFFER, Mr. Chairman, from the honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, who denies that sympathy ought to be felt for the children of deceased officers, who may be in want. Those children have not served us, it is true; but their fathers who did, are beyond the reach of our gratitude, and the transfer of the feeling is natural and just. Public benefits bestowed on the children of the deceased father encourage him who is alive in the discharge of his duty, by the purest of all motives-paternal affection; and that legislation must be unwise, indeed, that fails to enlist, in support of the State, all the best impulses of humanity.

Let that republic get on as it can, where the veteran, blind, maimed, and poor, like Belisarius, is forced to apply to public charity for support! Let that republic get on as it can, where contracts are broken, and public beneficence refused; where nothing is given but what is in the bondand that is frequently refused! Let that republic get on as it can! It will never produce anything great; its career will be short and inglorious; its fall certain and unpitied; its history remembered as a warning, not as an example; and the names of its legislators and statesmen buried in oblivion to which their false economy tends to consign the memory of those who have established its freedom, or defended it from aggression. May our republic show, by its decision on this bill, that it has a higher destiny, and that it is guarded as well by liberality and honor, as by justice!

Hon. Edward Livingston, 1827.

NEW ENGLANDERS IN NEW ORLEANS.

WHILE We devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that, though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We are no exiles, meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters with our home-sick tears. Here floats the same banner which rustled over our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.

The sons of New England are found in every State of the broad Republic. In the East, the South, and the unbounded

West, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. Το us, the Union has but one domestic hearth; its sacred household gods are all the same.

Upon us, then, peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth; of guarding, with pious care, those sacred household gods.

We can not do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows Northern and Southern blood. How shall it be separated? Who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the noblest instincts of our nature? We love the land of our adoption; so do we that of our birth. Let us ever be true to both; and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the republic.

Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden cord of Union; thrice accursed the traitorous lips, whether of Northern fanatic or Southern demagogue, which shall propose its severance! But no! the Union cannot be dissolved; its fortunes are too briliant to be marred-its destinies too powerful to be resisted. Here will be their greatest triumph, their most mighty developement.

And when, a century hence, this Crescent City shall have filled her golden horns; when within her broad-armed port shall be gathered the products of a hundred millions of freemen; when galleries of art and halls of learning shall have made classic this mart of trade; then may the sons of the Pilgrims, still wandering from the bleak hills of the North, stand upon the banks of the Great River, and exclaim, with mingled pride and wonder, -Lo! this is our country. When did the world ever witness so rich and magnificent a city, so great and glorious a republic?

S. S. Prentiss, 1845.

FREE DISCUSSION.

SIR, admit-for we must admit-that free discussion has ever been odious to the tyrant, and to all the minions of licentious power; but can we ever forget how eloquent, how enchanting the voice of that same freedom of speech has, in all ages, been, wherever its tones have fallen on the ear of freemen? Free discussion, and liberty itself, eloquence and freedom of speech, are contemporaneous fires, and brighten and

blaze, or languish and go out, together. Athenian liberty was, for years, protracted by that free discussion, which was sustained and continued in Athens. Freedom was prolonged by eloquence. Liberty paused and lingered, that she might listen to the divine intonations of her voice. Free discussion, the eloquence of one man, rolled back the tide of Macedonian power, and long preserved his country from the overwhelming deluge. When the light of free discussion had, throughout all the Grecian cities, been extinguished in the blood of those statesmen by whose eloquence it had been sustained, young Tully, breathing the spirit of Roman liberty on the expiring embers, relumed and transmitted, from the banks of the Ilissus to those of the Tiber, this glorious light of freedom. This mighty master of the forum, by his free discussions, both from the rostrum and in the senatehouse, gave new vigor, and a longer duration of existence, to the liberty of his country. Who more than Marcus Tullius Cicero, was loved and cherished by the friends of that country? Who more feared and hated by traitors and tyrants? Freedom of speech, Roman eloquence, and Roman liberty, expired together, when under the proscription of the second triumvirate, the hired bravo of Mark Antony placed in the lap of one of his profligate minions the head and the hands of Tully, the statesman, the orator, the illustrious father of his country. After amusing herself some hours by plunging her bodkin through that tongue which had so long delighted the senate and the rostrum, and made Antony himself tremble in the midst of his legions, she ordered that head, and those hands, then the trophies of a savage despotism, to be set up in the forum.

"Her last good man, dejected Rome adored;

Wept for her patriot slain, and cursed the tyrant's sword."

English statesmen and orators, in the free discussion of the English parliament, have been formed on those illustrious models of Greek and Roman policy and eloquence. Multiplied by the teeming labors of the press, the works of the master and the disciple have come to our hands; and the eloquence of Chatham, of Burke, of Fox, and of the younger Pitt, reaches us, not in the feeble and evanescent voice of tradition, but preserved and placed before the eye on the more imperishable page. Neither these great originals, nor their improved transcripts, have been lost to our country. The American political school of free discussion has enriched the nation with some distinguished scholars; and Dexter,