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grander and more powerful grasp of the principles of duty; in a more exalted communion with God in his holiness; in a higher disregard of the blandishments of time; in a mightier unfolding of all spiritual force; in a deeper impression on the history of the world. It is beneficent for the state, as for the persons who compose it, that conscience thus decide. "The State." What is it? It is not lands, or ports, or capitals. It is the MEN, who form and guide it. Where these are elevated, the state is flourishing. Let facts then testify of the tendencies of this system. Where the decree of an infallible church has been received as decisive in the questions of right-much more, where the doctrine. has obtained of a passive and unquestioning obedience to the state-what has been the issue? I put it to you, my friends. In Italy;-in Russia;-under the iron system of the despots of France;―has liberty advanced? has intelligence been diffused? has morality grown purer? has religion gained power? has right been done? has the state been ennobled? has even a just stability of government been secured and established? Nay, verily! But in all these the reverse! Wherever the doctrine has stepped, it has blighted. Wherever it has had sway, it has turned men into machines. The final revolution has been the more tremendous for its oppressions. The nation has degenerated to the level of its condition, or else the furious rush of a people that had borne till endurance became impossible has swept before it the palace and the throne.--And on the other hand take any man, take any people, in the development of the system which nurtures and educates conscience, as the guide to man's duty, as the interpreter of God's law for him, as the authority he must bow to, whatever man decrees, and Liberty there advances. The state grows in power, as its citizens are enlightened. It becomes settled and established, on the basis of equity. Follow it in its career; and its progress shall be traced in beneficence and peace. From first to last its orbit shall be an orbit that brightens with the glow of knowledge and of heroism; and that closes in the splendor of a still culminating glory.-R. S. Storrs, Jr., 1850.

ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA.

FOUR years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited, and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our

usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor, capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful in the oriental commerce of a far distant, if not merely chimerical, future.

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own, and we were celebrating with unanimity and enthusiasm its acquisition, with its newly-discovered but yet untold and untouched mineral wealth, as the most auspicious of many and unparalleled achievements.

To-day, California is a State, more populous than the least and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking ad is ion into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself

No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes!

SHALL CALIFORNIA BE RECEIVED? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer, Yes. For myself, as an instructed representative of one of the States, of that one even of the States which is soonest and longest to be pressed in commercial and political rivalry by the new commonwealth, I answer, Yes. Let California come in. Every new State, whether she come from the East or from the West, every new State, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east; California, which bounds at once the empire and the continent; California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold--is doubly welcome.-Hon. William H. Seward, 1850.

REVOLUTION IN THE INTEREST OF SLAVERY.

THERE are some who would alarm us with the terrors of revolution in behalf of the interests of slavery. Sir, in any condition of society there can be no revolution without a cause, an adequate cause. What cause exists here? We

are admitting a new State; but there is nothing new in that; we have already admitted seventeen before. But it is said that the slave States are in danger of losing political power

Well, sir, is there any

by the admission of the new State.* thing new in that? The slave States have always been losing political power, and they always will be while they have any to lose. At first, twelve of the thirteen States were slave States; now only fifteen out of the thirty are slave States. Moreover, the change is constitutionally made, and the Government was constructed so as to permit changes of the balance of power, in obedience to the changes of the forces of the body politic. Danton used to say, "It's all well while the people cry Danton and Robespierre; but wo for me if ever the people learn to say Robespierre and Danton!" That is all of it, sir. The people have been accustomed to say the South and the North; they are only beginning now to say the North and the South.

There is not now, and there is not likely to occur, any adequate cause for revolution in regard to slavery. But you reply that, nevertheless, you must have guaranties; and the first one is for the surrender of fugitives from labor. That guaranty you cannot have, as I have already shown, because you cannot roll back the tide of social progress. You must be content with what you have. If you wage war against us, you can, at most, only conquer us, and then all you can get will be a treaty, and that you have already.

But you insist on a guaranty against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or war. Well, when you shall have declared war against us, what shall hinder us from immediately decreeing that slavery shall cease within the national capital?

You say that you will not submit to the exclusion of slaves from the new Territories. What will you gain by resistance? Liberty follows the sword, although her sway is one of peace and beneficence. Can you propagate slavery then by the sword?

You insist that you cannot submit to the freedom with which slavery is discussed in the free States. Will war-a war for slavery-arrest or even moderate that discussion? No, sir; that discussion will not cease; war would only inflame it to a greater height. It is a part of the eternal conflict between truth and error-between mind and physical force-the conflict of man against the obstacles which oppose his way to an ultimate and glorious destiny. It will go on until you shall terminate it in the only way in which any State or nation has ever terminated it-by yielding to ityielding in your own time, and in your own manner, indeed,

* California.

but nevertheless yielding to the progress of emancipation. You will do this, sooner or later, whatever may be your opinion now; because nations which were prudent and hu-' mane, and wise as you are, have done so already.

Let, then, those who distrust the Union make compromises to save it. I shall not impeach their wisdom, as I certainly cannot their patriotism; but, indulging no such apprehensions myself, I shall vote for the admission of California directly, without conditions, without qualifications, and without compromise.

For the vindication of that vote I look not to the verdict of the passing hour, disturbed as the public mind now is by conflicting interests and passions, but to that period, happily not far distant, when the vast regions over which we are now legislating shall have received their destined inhabitants.

While looking forward to that day, its countless generations seem to me to be rising up and passing in dim and shadowy review before us; and a voice comes forth from their serried ranks, saying, "Waste your treasures and your armies, if you will; raze your fortifications to the ground; sink your navies into the sea; transmit to us even a dishonored name, if you must; but the soil you hold in trust for us-give it to us free. You found it free, and conquered it to extend a better and surer freedom over it. Whatever choice you have made for yourselves, let us have no partial freedom; let us all be free; let the reversion of your broad domain descend to us unincumbered, and free from the calamities and the sorrows of human bondage."

Hon. William H. Seward, 1850.

THE SENATE OF ROME AND THE AMERICAN CONGRESS.

SIR-AS once Cineas, the Epirote,* stood among the sen ators of Rome, who, with a word of self-conscious majesty, arrested kings in their ambitious march, thus full of admiration and of reverence, I stand among you, legislators of the new capitol, that glorious hall of your people's collective majesty. The capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it, and is come over to yours, purified by the

*Cineas was the warm friend and minister of Pyrrhus, the famous King of Epirus. He was once sent on an embassy to Rome with proposals for peace from Pyrrhus to the Senate. When he returned, he told the king that there was no people like the Romans,-that their city was a temple, and their senate an assembly of kings.

air of liberty. The old stands, a mournful monument of the fragility of human things; yours, as a sanctuary of eternal right. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by the gloom of oppression; yours is bright with freedom. The old absorbed the world into its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation from being absorbed, even by itself. The old was awful with unrestricted power yours is glorious by having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes.

To the old, misfortune was introduced with fettered hands to kneel at triumphant conquerors' feet; to yours, the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles, who are invited to the honor of a seat. And, where kings and Cæsars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a down-trodden nation is welcomed, as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless and poor. In the old, the terrible vœ victis! was the rule; in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished just cause. And, while from the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common federative interests of a territory larger than that old conquered world. There sat men boasting that their will was sovereign on the earth; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge "the laws of nature and nature's God, and to do what their sovereign, the people, wills."-Louis Kossuth, 1851.

PRACTICAL WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT.

WITH every attempt to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists. Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of man. The spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils entered the Swine. Upstart commissioners, the mere mushrooms of courts, vie and revie with each other. Now by indecent speed, now by harshness of manner, now by a denial of evidence, now by crippling the defence, and now by open glaring wrong, they make the odious act yet more odious. Clemency, grace and justice die in its presence. All this is observed by the world. Not a case occurs which does not harrow the souls of good men, and bring tears of sympathy

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