rificed were his advocates and defenders. Is this the return you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? But the noble Lord says, "We must now show the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your Government, for many years past, been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbors? Have you not stimulated discontent into disaffection, and are you not now goading disaffection into rebellion? Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partisans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused? Let the banners be once spread in America, and you are an undone people. You are urging this desperate, this destructive issue. In assenting to your late Bill, I resisted the violence of America at the hazard of my popularity there. I now resist your frenzy at the same risk here. I know the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the Provincials; but beware how you supply the want of discipline by desperation! What madness is it that prompts you to attempt obtaining that by force which you may more certainly procure by requisition? The Americans may be flattered into anything; but they are too much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness; respect their sturdy English virtue; retract your odious exertions of authority, and remember that the first step towards making them contribute to your wants is to reconcile them to your Government. 8* 20. ENMITY TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN.-R. Choate. Mr. President, we must distinguish a little. That there exists in this country an intense sentiment of nationality; a cherished energetic feeling and consciousness of our independent and separate national existence; a feeling that we have a transcendent destiny to fulfill, which we mean to fulfill; a great work to do, which we know how to do, and are able to do; a career to run, up which we hope to ascend, till we stand on the steadfast and glittering summits of the world; a feeling that we are surrounded and attended by a noble historical group of competitors and rivals, the other nations of the earth, all of whom we hope to overtake, and even to distance;-such a sentiment as this exists, perhaps, in the character of this people. And this I do not discourage, I do not condemn. But, sir, that among these useful and beautiful sentiments, predominant among them, there exists a temper of hostility toward this one particular nation, to such a degree as to amount to a habit, a trait, a national passion-to amount to a state of feeling which "is to be regretted," and which really threatens another war— this I earnestly and confidently deny. No, sir! no, sir! We are above all this. Let the Highland clansman, half naked, half civilized, half blinded by the peat-smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive if he can; let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs, smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet; let such a country as Poland,— cloven to the earth, the armed heel on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul not able to die,-let her remember the "wrongs of days long past"; let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs-the manliness and the sympathy of the world may allow or pardon this to them;but shall America, young, free, prosperous, just setting out on the highway of heaven, "decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just begins to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and joy," shall she be supposed to be polluting and corroding her noble and happy heart, by moping over old stories of stamp act, and tea tax, and the firing of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake in a time of peace? No, sir! no, sir! a thousand times no! Why, I protest I thought all that had been settled. I thought two wars had settled it all. What else was so much good blood shed for, on so many more than classical fields of revolutionary glory? For what was so much good blood more lately shed, at Lundy's Lane, at Fort Erie, before and behind the lines at New Orleans, on the deck of the Constitution, on the deck of the Java, on the lakes, on the sea, but to settle exactly these "wrongs of past days"? And have we come back sulky and sullen from the very field of honor? For my country, I deny it. That Mr. President, let me say that, in my judgment, this notion of a national enmity of feeling toward Great Britain belongs to a past age of our history. My younger countrymen are unconscious of it. They disavow it. generation in whose opinions and feelings the actions and the destiny of the next are unfolded, as the tree in the germ, do not at all comprehend your meaning, nor your fears, nor your regrets. We are born to happier feelings. We look to England as we look to France. We look to them, from our new world,- not unrenowned, yet a new world still,— and the blood mounts to our cheeks; our eyes swim; our voices are stifled with emulousness of so much glory; their trophies will not let us sleep; but there is no hatred at all: no hatred, no barbarian memory of wrongs, for which brave men have made the last expiation to the brave. 21. THE SOUTH DURING THE REVOLUTION.-Robert Y. Hayne, 1830. If there be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a boastful spirit), that may challenge comparisons with any other, for an uniform, zealous, ardent and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution, up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made,— no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity, but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by parties, or surrounded with difficulties, the call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord ceased at the sound; every man became at once reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country. What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But, great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a generous zeal, which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guarantee that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But, trampling on all considerations either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never was there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering and heroic endurance, than by the whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children! Driven from their homes, into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived; and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions, proved, by her conduct, that, though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible. 22. SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, 1830.-Daniel Webster. The eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions,-Americans, all,—whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. Sir, I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood: when I refuse, |