GOVERNEUR MORRIS.- -JOHN A. DIX. 139 national independence. I know that prudence may force a wise government to conceal the sense of indignity; but the insult should be engraven on tablets of brass with a pencil of steel. And when that time and change, which happen to all, shall bring forward the favorable moment, then let the avenging arm strike home. It is by avowing and maintaining this stern principle of honor, that peace can be preserved. GOVERNEUR MORRIS. 109. THE TRIUMPHS OF SCIENCE. WHATEVER may be the issue of the experiments now in progress in government, in science, and in the useful arts, upon the external policy or the internal condition of nations; whatever obstacles may for a time oppose and defeat the triumph of enlightened principles; whether ancient prejudices shall again revive and ripen into collision, bringing in their train the conquest of provinces, the overthrow of armies, the deposition of monarchs, and the abolition of thrones; or whether a period of enduring tranquillity has even now begun to dawn upon the inhabitants of the earth;-happily, the cause of science fears no impediment, either from political agitation or discord. Her triumphs, as rapidly as they are achieved, are, by the instrumentality of the press, written down in all languages, and the record treasured up in a thousand places of safety. If any deluge of Vandalism shall overwhelm and bury in ruins the stores of knowledge which she has accumulated in one quarter of the globe, the same treasures will be preserved in others. Thus will the point at which, in all future time, the researches and discoveries of each generation shall have their termination, become the starting-place of their successors in the career of improvement. Nor has she any thing to fear from dissension among her own followers. Her empire is without bounds. Her domains know no geographical demarkations. Her votaries, wherever they are to be found, are citizens of the same great commonwealth; pursuing the same high objects, obeying the same honorable impulses; distracted by no party feuds; ambitious of no other triumphs but to carry the victorious arms of knowledge and truth into the dominions of ignorance and error. JOHN A. DIX.* * U.S. Senator from New York. 110. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. THE influence of Christianity upon the political condition of mankind, though silent and almost imperceptible, has doubtless been one of the most powerful instruments of its amelioration. The principles and the practical rules of conduct which it prescribes; the doctrine of the natural equality of men, of a common origin, a common responsibility, and a common fate; the lessons of humility, gentleness, and forbearance which it teaches, are as much at war with political, as they are with all moral, injustice, oppression, and wrong. During century after century, excepting for brief intervals, the world too often saw the beauty of the system marred by the fiercest intolerance and the grossest depravation. It has been made the confederate of monarchs in carrying out schemes of oppression and fraud. Under its banner, armed multitudes have been banded together, and led on by martial prelates to wars of desolation and revenge. Perpetrators of the blackest crimes have purchased from its chief ministers a mercenary immunity from punishment. But nearly two thousand years have passed away, and no trace is left of the millions who, under the influence of bad passions, have dishonored its holy precepts; or of the far smaller number who, in seasons of general depravation, have drunk its current of living water on the solitary mountain or in the hollow rock. Its simple maxims, outliving them all, are silently working out a greater revolution than any which the world has seen; and long as the period may seem since its doctrines were first announced, it is almost imperceptible when regarded as one of the divisions of that time which is of endless duration. To use the language of an eloquent and philosophical writer, "The movements of Providence are not restricted to narrow bounds: it is not anxious to deduce to-day the consequences of the premises it laid down yesterday. It may defer this for ages, till the fulness of time shall come. Its logic will not be less conclusive for reasoning slowly. Providence moves through time as the gods of Homer through space-it makes a step, and years have rolled away. How long a time, how many circumstances intervened before the regeneration of the moral powers of man by Christianity exercised its great, its legitimate function upon his social condition! yet who can doubt or mistake its power ?"* JOHN A. DIX.t * Guizot. US. Senator from New York. 111. INTELLIGENCE A NATIONAL SAFEGUARD. OUR history constantly points her finger to a most efficient resource, and indeed to the only elixir, to secure a long life to any popular government, in increased attention to useful education and sound morals, with the wise description of equal measures and just practices they inculcate on every leaf of recorded time. Before their alliance, the spirit of misrule will always, in time, stand rebuked, and those who worship at the shrine of unhallowed ambition, must quail. Storms, in the political atmosphere, may occasionally happen by the encroachments of usurpers, the corruption or intrigues of demagogues, or in the expiring agonies of faction, or by the sudden fury of popular phrensy; but, with the restraints and salutary influences of the allies before described, these storms will purify as healthfully as they often do in the physical world, and cause the tree of liberty, instead of falling, to strike its roots deeper. In this struggle, the enlightened and moral possess also a power, auxiliary and strong, in the spirit of the age, which is not only with them, but onward, in every thing to ameliorate or improve. When the struggle assumes the form of a contest with power, in all its subtlety, or with undermining and corrupting wealth, as it sometimes may, rather than with turbulence, sedition, or open aggression by the needy and desperate, it will be indispensable to employ still greater diligence; to cherish earnestness of purpose, resoluteness in conduct; to apply hard and constant blows to real abuses, and encourage not only bold, free, and original thinking, but determined action. In such a cause, our fathers were men whose hearts were not accustomed to fail them, through fear, however formidable the obstacles. We are not, it is trusted, such degenerate descendants, as to prove recreant, and fail to defend, with gallantry and firmness as unflinching, all which we have either derived from them, or since added to the rich inheritance. At such a crisis, therefore, and in such a cause, yielding to neither consternation nor despair, may we not all profit by the vehement exhortations of Cicero to Atticus? "If you are asleep, awake; if you are standing, move; if you are moving, run; if you are running, fly!" All these considerations warn us-the gravestones of almost every former republic warn us—that a high standard of moral rectitude, as well as of intelligence, is quite as indispensable to communities, in their public doings, as to individuals, if they would escape from either degeneracy or disgrace. LEVI WOODBURY.* 112. THE PERMANENCE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY. THE election of a chief magistrate by the mass of the people of an extensive community, was, to the most enlightened nations of antiquity, a political impossibility. Destitute of the art of printing, they could not have introduced the representative principle into their political systems, even if they had understood it. In the very nature of things, that principle can only be coextensive with popular intelligence. In this respect, the art of printing, more than any invention since the creation of man, is destined to change and elevate the political condition of society. It has given a new impulse to the energies of the human mind, and opens new and brilliant destinies to modern republics, which were utterly unattainable by the ancients. The existence of a country population, scattered over a vast extent of territory, as intelligent as the population of the cities, is a phenomenon which was utterly and necessarily unknown to the free states of antiquity. All the intelligence which controlled the destiny and upheld the dominion of republican Rome, was confined to the walls of the great city. Even when her dominion extended beyond Italy to the utmost known limits of the inhabited world, the city was the exclusive seat both of intelligence and empire. Without the art of printing, and the consequent advantages of a free press, that habitual and incessant action of mind upon mind, which is essential to all human improvement, could no more exist, among a numerous and scattered population, than the commerce of disconnected continents could traverse the ocean without the art of navigation. Here, then, is the source of our superiority, and our just pride as a nation. The statesmen of the remotest extremes of the Union, can converse together, like the philosophers of Athens, in the same portico, or the politicians of Rome, in the same forum. Distance is overcome, and the citizens of Georgia and of Maine can be brought to co-operate in the same great object, with as perfect a community of views and feelings, as actuated the * U. S. Senator from New Hampshire. GEORGE MCDUFFIE.-S. S. PRENTISS. 143 tribes of Rome, in the assemblies of the people. It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States, than it ever has had in any other age or country. By the representative principle-a principle unknown and impracticable among the ancients, the whole mass of society is brought to operate, in constraining the action of power, and in the conservation of public liberty. GEORGE MCDUFFIE.* 113. NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. GLORIOUS New England! thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the revolution; and far away in the horizon of thy past gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of our Pilgrim sires! But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters with our homesick tears. Here floats the same banner which rustled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number. The sons of New England are found in every state of the broad republic! In the East, the South, and the unbounded West, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. To us the Union has but one domestic hearth; its household gods are all the same. Upon us, then, peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth; of guarding with pious care those sacred household gods. We cannot do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows northern and southern blood: how shall it be separated?—who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the noblest instincts of * U. S. Representative from South Carolina. |