each other in the realms of space, without causing the crush of the universe.

There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering the whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union: but, sir, I see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven, what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its two-fold character!

Peaceable secession! peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great Republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What states are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be?. no longer? Am I to become a sectional man

an American —a local man,

a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower! — or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, sir, our ancestors our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives- would rebuke and reproach us; and our children, and grandchildren, would cry out shame upon us, if we, of this generation, should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the Government, and the harmony of that Union, which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is any one of the thirty states to defend itself?

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Sir, we could not sit down here to-day, and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together; and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break, if we would, and which we should not, if we could.

ON RECOGNIZING THE INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE.

HENRY CLAY.

Are we so low, so base, so despicable, that we may not express our horror, articulate our detestation, of the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth, or shocked high heaven, with the ferocious deeds of a brutal soldiery, set on by the clergy and followers of a fanatical and inimical religion, rioting in excess of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens? If the great mass of Christendom can look coolly and calmly on, while all this is perpetrated on a Christian people, in their own vicinity, in their very presence, let us, at least, show that, in this distant extremity, there is still some sensibility and sympathy for Christian wrongs and sufferings; that there are still feelings which can kindle into indignation at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every modern tie. But, sir, it is not first and chiefly for Greece that I wish to see this measure adopted. It will give them but little aid that aid purely of a moral kind. It is, indeed, soothing and solacing in distress to hear the accents of a friendly voice. We know this as a people. But, sir, it is principally and mainly for America herself, for the credit and character of our common country, that I hope to see this resolution pass-it is for our own unsullied name that I feel.

What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would a record like this make? "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour 1824, while all European Christendom beheld with cold, unfeeling apathy the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of the Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United Statesalmost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human hope and of human freedom, the representatives of a nation capable of bringing into the field a million bayonets- while the freemen of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, its fervent prayer, for Grecian success; while the whole continent was rising, by one simultaneous motion, solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking the aid of heaven to spare Greece, and to invigorate her arms; while temples and senate-houses were all resounding with one burst of generous sympathy;—in the year of our Lord and Saviour that Saviour alike of Christian Greece

and of us. ―a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with an expression of our good wishes and our sympathies, and it was rejected!" Go home, if you darego home if you can to your constituents, and tell them you voted it down. Meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that, you can not tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you; that the spectres of cimeters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings, prompted by religion, by liberty, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity! I can not bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this house.

EXTENT OF COUNTRY NO BAR TO UNION.

EDMUND RANDOLPH.

[In the Virginia Convention on the Federal Constitution, 1788.] Extent of country, in my conception, ought to be no bar to the adoption of a good government. No extent on earth seems to me too great, provided the laws be wisely made and executed. The principles of representation and responsibility may pervade a large, as well as a small territory; and tyranny is as easily introduced into a small as into a large district. Union, Mr. Chairman, is the work of our salvation. Our safety, our political happiness, our existence, depend on the union of these states. Without union, the people of this and the other states will undergo the unspeakable calamities which discord, faction, turbulence, war, and bloodshed, have continually produced in other countries. Without union, we throw away all those blessings for which we have so earnestly fought. Without union, there is no peace, sir, in the land.

The American spirit ought to be mixed with American pride-pride to see the union magnificently triumph. Let that glorious pride which once defied the British thunder, reanimate you again. Let it not be recorded of Americans, that, after having performed the most gallant exploits, after having overcome the most astonishing difficulties, and after having gained the admiration of the world by their incomparable valor and policy, they lost their acquired reputation, lost their national consequence and happiness, by their own indiscretion. Let no future historian inform posterity that Americans wanted wisdom and virtue to concur in any regular, efficient government. Catch the present moment! Seize it with avidity. It may be lost, never to be regained; and if the union be lost now, I fear it will remain so forever!

THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON.

RUFUS CHOATE.

The birthday of the "Father of his Country!" May it ever be freshly remembered by American hearts! May it ever re-awaken in them a filial veneration for his memory; ever rekindle the fires of patriotic regard for the country which he loved so well, to which he gave his youthful vigor and his youthful energy, during the perilous period of the early Indian warfare; to which he devoted his life in the maturity of his powers, in the field; to which again he offered the counsels of his wisdom and his experience, as President of the convention that framed our Constitution; which he guided and directed while in the chair of state, and for which the last prayer of his earthly supplication was offered up, when it came the moment for him so well, and so grandly, and so calmly to die. He was the first man of the time in which he grew. His memory is first and most sacred in our love, and ever hereafter, till the last drop of blood shall freeze in the last American heart, his name shall be a spell of power and of might.

Yes, gentlemen, there is one personal, one vast felicity, which no man can share with him. It was the daily beauty, and towering and matchless glory of his life, which enabled him to create his country, and at the same time, secure an undying love and regard from the whole American people. "The first in the hearts of his countrymen!" Yes, first! He has our first and most fervent love. Undoubtedly there were brave and wise and good men, before his day, in every colony. But the American nation, as a nation, I do not reckon to have begun before 1774. And the first love of that Young America was Washington. The first word she lisped was his name. Her earliest breath spoke it. It still is her