sent, be planted or established on any part of the North American continent;" and should the attempt be made, they thus deliberately declare that it will be viewed as an act originating in motives regardless of their “interests and their safety," and which will leave them free to adopt such measures as an independent nation may justly adopt in defence of its rights and its honor.

"And be it further resolved, That while the United States disclaim any designs upon the island of Cuba, inconsistent with the laws of nations, and with their duties to Spain, they consider it due to the vast importance of the subject to make known, in this solemn manner, that they should view all efforts on the part of any other power to procure possession, whether peaceably or forcibly, of that island, which, as a naval or military position, might, under circumstances easy to be foreseen, become dangerous to their southern coast, to the gulf of Mexico, and to the mouth of the Mississippi, as unfriendly acts directed against them, to be resisted by all the means in their power.'

"In bringing together these actions of John Quincy Adams in 1822, and of the senator from Michigan in 1853, and placing them in juxtaposition in the history of the senate, I have done all that the senator from Michigan seems to have left undone, to vindicate the departed statesman from the censures heaped upon him by the living one in 1850."

After this vindication of the sage of Quincy, Mr. Seward availed himself of the opportunity to express his own opinions on the great subjects under review. In regard to the acquisition of Cuba, he says:

"While I do not desire the immediate or early annexation of Cuba, nor see how I could vote for it at all until slavery shall have ceased to counteract the workings of nature in that beautiful island, nor even then, unless it could come into the Union without injustice to Spain, without aggressive war, and without producing internal dissensions among ourselves, I nevertheless yield my full assent to the convictions expressed by John Quincy Adams, that this nation can never safely allow the island of Cuba to pass under the dominion of any power that is already, or can become, a formidable rival or enemy; and can not safely consent to the restoration of colonial relations between any portions of this continent and the monarchies of Europe."

In February the important question of our "Relations with Mexico, and the Continental railroad," was debated

in the senate. The speech of Mr. Seward on that subject abounds in lucid views of national policy.*

On the proposal to abolish or suspend the duty on foreign railroad iron, Mr. Seward addressed the senate in one of his most characteristic speeches.† In this speech we find the following warning to the country of the danger of an approaching revulsion in railroad affairs no less just than, as it now appears, prophetic :

“I ask, now, what is the apology for this extraordinary measure? It is that it will encourage the making of railroads. Sir, I have spent my life, what there has been of it spent in public action, in encouraging the making of canals and railroads. I am a friend to canals and railroads; but I show my fidelity to them in adhering to them when they are unpopular and need help, and support, and patronage, and not when they have patronage so great as to be alarming for its effect, not only upon enterprises of that class, but upon the country itself. Do you know how many railroads you are making? You are making twelve thousand miles of railroads in the United States already. You are making them so fast, that you do not rely upon your own resources for making them at all, but you are selling the credit of individuals, towns, counties, and states, throughout the Union, in untold amounts, and constituting an aggregate debt greater than any amount which any man ever presumed it would be safe for this country to owe to foreign countries. Your railroads are not now made chiefly by subscriptions to their stock. There are small substratum subscriptions, then mortgages on the road, then second mortgages, then third mortgages, until the credit of whole communities is pledged, and pledged to English capitalists.

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We are pledged in London for the cost of nearly all our railroads. Our capital is being diverted, so that there is no place in the United States where there is not a railroad being made.

"There are already half a dozen railroads from the point of Lake Erie to the city of New York, all converging there, because railroads have become popular and profitable. So it is + See Vol. III., p. 623.

* See Vol. III., p. 656.

throughout New England and throughout the west. Now it is not possible that the railroad enterprise in this country can absorb capital in an exclusive degree without producing an injury, not only to that enterprise and those subservient to it, but also injurious to other enterprises which increase the vigor and promote the progress of the country. Does any man doubt it? What did we do ten years ago, when we embarked in building canals and railroads so deeply, and pledged our credit so far, that the construction of every canal and railroad had to be suspended? What happened in England on a like occasion, but that a great railroad-king projected railroads all over the island; and so much capital was invested in them, that all at once the bubble was pricked, and the whole enterprise collapsed, bringing on general stagnation and bankruptcy? This is the tendency of things here now. I am not by habit a croaker; but I can see that, unless the national government shall act so as to restrain rather than encourage and stimulate this excessive spirit of speculation in railroad investments, just such a collapse will happen here. Railroads do not need protection; iron manufacturers do need it. Through the town in which I live, and the towns adjacent, the people, carried away by railroad enthusiasm, have applied to the legislature for permission to mortgage their whole property for the making of railroads; and yet there is not one railroad which they are thus making, in which foreign capitalists will invest a dollar, except they have collateral, personal, or public security. But you will tell me that Congress has not encouraged railroads. Congress has already encouraged railroads by donations of duties on foreign railroad iron exceeding the sum of three millions of dollars. Congress has already, with almost a unanimous vote in this chamber, given to every western state land enough from the public domain – as much as they said was necessary-to construct a web of railroads now in progress and advancing to its completion, covering over the whole of the territories of the United States from the shores of the Atlantic to the Mississippi river, and even crossing that broad line, and advancing precisely upon the same system and same policy toward the base of the Rocky mountains. We have done enough, unless we have some other resources-some other revenues which we can apply to this great and beneficent

enterprise of the age; and we have no other, if the only other one is the sacrifice of the mining interest of iron in the old Atlantic states. Sir, I have voted land by the square league across the continent, and twenty millions of dollars out of the public treasury for railroads. I will not vote one dollar out of the ironmines of my country, at the cost of the owner, and of the miner who is engaged in drawing its wealth to the surface.”

This was followed by a speech on "Texas and her Creditors," which closes the list of Mr. Seward's senatorial efforts during that Congress. Both of these speeches are marked by the admirable union of statistics, general reasoning, and lofty sentiments of which the texture of his deliberative eloquence is composed.

After an extra session of several weeks called by the new administration to consider executive appointments, the senate adjourned in April, 1853. Mr. Seward was occupied during the summer in the courts of the United States, but he found time to accept an urgent call to deliver an address at the dedication of Capital University at Columbus the seat of government in the state of Ohio. This address rises to the dignity of an oration and pleads the cause of human nature as especially committed to the care of the people of the United States. It closes with an eloquent showing of the responsibilities, in this respect, of the college or the university as an American institution.†

Mr. Seward's studies during the recess of Congress closed with the delivery of an address before the American Institute at New York on the 20th of October, 1853. This address was a stirring appeal to the American people to rise to a higher tone of individual and national independence, in thought, sentiment, and action. While every

part of it was received with distinguished favor, no part was more just or more highly appreciated than the following touching tribute to the memory of James Tallmadge :

* See Vol. III., p. 667.

This address will be found among the selections in this volume.

"I have been for many reasons habitually averse from mingling in the sometimes excited debates which crowd upon each other in a great city. There was, however, an authority which I could not disobey, in the venerable name and almost paternal kindness of the eminent citizen, who so recently presided here with dignity and serenity all his own; and who transmitted the invitation of the Institute, and persuaded its acceptance!

"How sudden his death! Only three weeks ago, the morning mail brought to me his announcement of his arrival to ar range this exhibition, and his summons to me to join him here; and the evening despatch, on the self-same day, bore the painful intelligence that the lofty genius which had communed with kindred spirits so long, on the interests of his country, had departed from the earth, and that the majestic form which had been animated by it, had disappeared for ever from among living

men.

"I had disciplined myself when coming here, so as to purpose to speak no word for the cause of human freedom, lest what might seem too persistent an advocacy might offend. But must I, therefore, abridge of its just proportions the eulogium which the occasion and the character of the honored dead alike demand?

"The first ballot which I cast for the chief magistracy of my native and most beloved state, bore the name of James Tallmadge, as the alternate of De Witt Clinton. If I have never faltered in pursuing the policy of that immortal statesman, through loud reproach and vindictive opposition during his life, and amid clamors and contentions, often amounting almost to faction, since his death, I have found as little occasion to hesitate or waver in adhering to the counsels and example of the illustrious compeer, who, after surviving him so many years, has now been removed, in ripened age, to the companionship of the just. How does not time vindicate fidelity to truth and to our country! A vote for Clinton and Tallmadge in 1824, what censures did it not bring then? Who will impeach that ballot now?

"A statesman's claim to the gratitude of his country rests on what were, or what would have been, the results of the policy he has recommended. If the counsels of James Tallmadge had