quenched, our liberties destroyed, and all our bright hopes die out in that night which knows no coming dawn. Hon. Thomas Corwin, 1860.

UBIQUITY OF THE YANKEE.

As to this question of territorial legislation, touching slavery in the Territories, let gentlemen pause upon that, and consider before they rush to conclusions. Í tell gentlemen of the South-and the day will come when they will remember my advice-not to trust Northern people to make laws of their own in the Territories for the exclusion or protection of slavery. I do not care where you go, in any latitude under the heavens where a white man can live and work, the Yankees will go there too. Wherever clocks can be used or sold, there they will be. If they come to learn that it is the law of the Republic that the status of the country is fixed forever by the first inhabitants, instead of settling that status here, among men who are responsible to the country and to history, they will settle the question as they did in Kansas. They will always beat you, if you open the question in that way. Let this calm, deliberative, legislative assembly of gentlemen, who legislate for the whole Union of ty millions of people-let them determine whether it is better that slavery should go there or not; let that question come here, where we look at this great country, and all the Territories we have, and all we may ever acquire, as common patrimony, alike of all the States, and all the people we rep

resent.

The population which usually goes into new Territories is generally led by an eager and sometimes wild spirit of adventure. The people will keep out the negro, because they have no negroes of their own, no slaves of their own. I care not whether the Territory be at the north pole or near the equator, they will go there, and will keep your negroes out, if you allow them to determine whether slavery shall be there or not. I should think that any man who has looked at the history of Kansas for the last three years, with reference to this matter, will not doubt my conclusions. In consequence of Congress. giving up this great conservative power to make laws for an uncongenial heterogeneous people, civil war raged for three years over the beautiful plains of Kansas, where there should have been nothing heard but the jocund whistle of the plowman driving his team to the field, and where nothing

else or worse would have been heard, if Congress had only made laws to govern that Territory, and sent its governor, and, if necessary, troops, to execute the law. You made an experiment there, and you know the result.

Hon. Thomas Corwin, 1860.

MAN'S NATURAL RIGHT TO THE SOIL.

THE Government, by its existing land policy, has thus caused to be abstracted from the earnings of its hardy pioneers almost seventeen hundred million dollars for the mere privilege of enjoying one of God's bounties to man. This large amount has been abstracted from the sons of toil without rendering any equivalent, save a permit from the State to occupy a wilderness, to which not a day or hour of man's labor had been applied to change it from the condition in which the God of nature made it. Why should governments seize upon any of the bounties of God to man, and make them a source of revenue? While the earth was created for the whole human family, and was made its abiding place through the pilgrimage of this life, and since the hour of the primal curse, "In the sweat of thy face shalt the eat bread," man has been forced to the cultivation of the soil to obtain subsistence for himself and the means of promoting the welfare of the race, why should governments wrest from him the right to apply his labor to such unoccupied portion of the earth's surface as may be necessary for his support until he has contributed to the revenues of the State, any more than to permit him to breathe the air, enjoy the sunlight, or quaff from the rills and rivers of the earth? It would be just as rightful, were it possible to be done, to survey the atmosphere off into quarter sections, and transfer it by parchment titles; divide the sun into quantum of rays, and dole it out to groping mortals at a price; or arch over the water of the earth into vast reservoirs, and sell it to dying men. In the language of remarks heretofore made on this subject, why has this claim of man to monopolize any of the gifts of God to man been confined, by legal codes, to the soil alone? Is there any other reason than that it is a right which, having its origin in feudal times-under a system that regarded man but as an appendage of the soil that he tilled, and whose life, liberty, and happiness were but means of increasing the pleasures, pampering the passions and appetites of his liege lord—and, having once found a place in the

books, it has been retained by the reverence which man is wont to pay to the past and to time-honored precedents? The human mind is so constituted that it is prone to regard as right what has come down to us approved by long usage, and hallowed by gray age. It is a claim that had its origin with the kindred idea that royal blood flows only in the veins of an exclusive few, whose souls are more ethereal, because born amid the glitter of courts, and cradled amid the pomp of lords and courtiers; and, therefore, they are to be installed as rulers and lawgivers of the race. Most of the evils that afflict society have had their origin in violence and wrong enacted into law by the experience of the past, and retained by the prejudices of the present.

Is it not time you swept from your statute-book its still lingering relics of feudalism? blotted out the principles ingrafted upon it by the narrow-minded policy of other times, and adapted the legislation of the country to the spirit of the age, and to the true ideas of man's rights and relations to his Government?-Hon. G. A. Grow, 1860.

FREE HOMES FOR FREE MEN.

I WOULD provide in our land policy for securing homesteads to actual settlers; and whatever bounties the Government should grant to the old soldiers, I would have made in money and not in land warrants, which are bought in most cases by the speculator as an easier and cheaper mode of acquiring the public lands. So they only facilitate land monopoly. The men who go forth at the call of their country to uphold its standard and vindicate its honor, are deserving, it is true, of a more substantial reward than tears to the dead and thanks to the living; but there are soldiers of peace as well as of war, and though no waving plume beckons them on to glory or to death, their dying scene is oft a crimson one. They fall leading the van of civilization along untrodden paths, and are buried in the dust of its advancing columns. No monument marks the scene of deadly strife; no stone their resting place; the winds sighing through the branches of the forest alone sing their requiem. Yet they are the meritorious men of the Republic-the men who give it strength in war and glory in peace. The achievements of your pioneer army, from the day they first drove back the Indian tribes from the Atlantic seaboard to the present hour,

have been the achievements of science and civilization over the elements, the wilderness, and the savage.

If rewards or bounties are to be granted for true heroism in the progress of the race, none is more deserving than the pioneer who expels the savage and the wild beast, and opens in the wilderness home for science and pathway for civili

zation.

"Peace hath her victories,

No less renowned than war."

The paths of glory no longer lead over smoking towns and crimsoned fields, but along the lanes and by-ways of human misery and woe, where the bones and sinews of men are struggling with the elements, with the unrelenting obstacles of nature, and the not less unmerciful obstacles of a false civilization. The noblest achievement in this world's pilgrimage is to raise the fallen from their degradation; soothe the broken hearted, dry the tears of woe, and alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunate in their pathway to the tomb.

"Go say unto the raging sea, Be still;

Bid the wild, lawless winds obey thy will;
Preach to the storm, and reason with despair;
But tell not misery's son that life is fair."

If you would lead the erring back from the paths of vice and crime to virtue and to honor, give him a home-give him a hearthstone, and he will surround it with household gods. If you would make men wiser and better, relieve your almshouses, close the doors of your penitentiaries, and break in pieces your gallows; purify the influences of the domestic fireside, for that is the school in which human character is formed, and there its destiny is shaped; there the soul receives its first impress, and man his first lesson, and they go with him for weal or for woe through life. For purifying the sentiments, elevating the thoughts, and developing the noblest impulses of man's nature, the influences of a rural fireside and an agricultural life are the noblest and the best.In the obscurity of the cottage, far removed from the seductive influences of rank and affluence, are nourished the vir tues that counteract the decay of human institutions, the courage that defends the national independence, and the industry that supports all classes of the state. Hon. G. A. Grow, 1860.

THE HOMESTEAD THE SOURCE OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

MAN, in defence of his hearthstone and fireside, is invinci ble against a world of mercenaries.

Let us adopt the policy cherished by Jackson, and indicated in his annual message to Congress in 1832, in which he says:

"It cannot be doubted that the speedy settlement of these lands constitutes the true interest of the Republic. The wealth and strength of a country are its population, and the best part of the population are the cultivators of the soil."

Why should the Government hold the public domain longer as a source of revenue, when it has already more than paid all costs and expenses incurred in its acquisition and management? Even if the Government had a right, based in the nature of things, thus to hold these lands, it would be adverse to a sound national policy to do so; for the real wealth of a country consists not in the sum of money paid into its treasury, but in its flocks, herds, and cultivated fields. Nor does its real strength consist in fleets and armies, but in the bones and sinews of an independent yeomanry and the comfort of its laboring classes. Its real glory consists not in the splendid palace, lofty spire, or towering dome; but in the intelligence, comfort, and happiness of the fireside of its citizens.

"What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned,
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No! men, high-minded men.

But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;

Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain :
These constitute a State."

Had the policy advocated by Gracchus, of distributing the public lands among the landless citizens of the nation, been adopted, the Roman fields would have been cultivated by free men instead of slaves, and there would have been a race of men to stay the ravages of the barbarian. The eternal city would not then have fallen an easy prey to the Goth and