culty in arraigning it for blasphemy, as stripping the Almighty of His essential attributes, and setting up man as independent of God, and needing not His grace. Law is the proper judge of action, and reward or punishment its proper sanction.

5. Reason is the proper umpire of opinion, and argument and discussion its only fit advocates. To denounce opinions by law is as silly, and unfortunately much more tyrannical, as it would be to punish crime by logic. Law calls out the force of the community to compel obedience to its mandates. To operate on opinion by law is to enslave the intellect and oppress the soul-to reverse the order of nature and make reason subservient to force.

6. But of all the attempts to arrogate unjust dominion, none is so pernicious as the efforts of tyrannical men to rule over the human conscience. Religion is exclusively an affair between man and his God. If there be any subject upon which the interference of human power is more forbidden than on all others it is on religion. Born of Faith,-nurtured by Hope,invigorated by Charity,-looking for its rewards in a world beyond the grave,-it is of heaven, heavenly.

7. The evidence on which it is founded, and the sanctions by which it is upheld are addressed solely to the understanding and the purified affections. Even He from whom cometh every pure and perfect gift, and to whom religion is directed. as its author, its end, and its exceeding great reward, imposes no coercion on His children. He causes His sun to shine alike on the believer and the unbeliever and His dews to fertilize equally the soil of the orthodox and the heretic.

8. No earthly gains or temporal privations are to influence their judgment here, and it is reserved until the last day for the just Judge of all the earth to declare who have criminally refused to examine or to credit the evidences which were laid before them.

9. But civil rulers thrust themselves in and become God's avengers, under a pretended zeal for the honor of His house and the propagation of His revelation

"Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod;
Rejudge his justice-are the gods of God,"

to define faith by edicts, statutes, and constitutions; deal ont largesses to accelerate conviction, and refute unbelief and heresy by the unanswerable logic of pains and penalties.

10. Let not religion be abused for this impious tyrannyreligion has nothing to do with it. Nothing can be conceived more abhorrent to the spirit of true religion, than the bypo critical pretensions of kings, princes, and magistrates to uphold her holy cause by their unholy violence.

JUDGE GASTON.

77. THE FOLLY OF DISUNION.

THREATS of resistance, secession, separation, have become

THREATS

common as household words, in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized, and the public mind will soon be accustomed to the detestable suggestions of DISUNION !

2. Calculations and conjectures, what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East; sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations, all tend to the same fatal end! What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East?

3. They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity. of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the "disjecta membra," the sundered and bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life, and strength, and vigor. They can furnish to the philosophic historian another melan choly and striking instance of the political axiom, that all republican confederacies have an inherent and unavoidable tendency to dissolution.

4. They will present fields and occasions for border wars, for leagues and counter-leagues, for the intrigues of petty statesmen, the struggles of military chiefs, for confiscations,

insurrections, and deeds of darkest hue. They will gladden the hearts of those who have proclaimed that men are not fit to govern themselves, and shed a disastrous eclipse on the hopes of rational freedom throughout the world.

5. Solon, in his code, proposed no punishment for parricide treating it as an impossible crime. Such, with us, ought to be the crime of political parricide-the dismemberment of our "fatherland."

GASTON.

PART

ness.

78. PARTY SPIRIT.

ARTIES and party men may deserve reprobation for their selfishness, their violence, their errors, or their wickedThey may do our country much harm. They may retard its growth, destroy its harmony, impair its character, render its institutions unstable, pervert the public mind, and deprave the public morals. These are, indeed, evils, and sore evils; but the principle of life remains, and will yet struggle, with assured success, over these temporary maladies.

2. Still we are great, glorious, united and free; still we have a name that is revered abroad, and loved at home-a name which is a tower of strength to us against foreign wrọng, and a bond of internal union and harmony-a name which no enemy pronounces but with respect, and which no citizen hears but with a throb of exultation.

3. Still we have that blessed Constitution, which, with all its pretended defects, and all its alleged violations, has conferred more benefit on man than ever yet flowed from any other institution-which has established justice, insured domestic tranquillity, provided for the common defence, promoted the general welfare, and which, under God, if we be true to ourselves, will insure the blessings of liberty to us and our posterity.

4. Surely, such a country and such a Constitution have claims upon you, my friends, which cannot be disregarded. I

entreat and adjure you, then, by all that is near and dear to you on earth, by all the obligations of patriotism, by the memory of your fathers, who fell in the great and glorious struggle, for the sake of your sons, whom you would not have to blush for your degeneracy, by all your proud recollections of the past, and all the fond anticipations of the future renown of our nation-preserve that country, uphold that Constitution.

5. Resolve that they shall not be lost while in your keeping, and may God Almighty strengthen you to perform that vow!

GASTON.

79. FACTIOUS POWER.

[On the subject of the Loan Bill of twenty-five millions, Mr. Calhoun, in the course of his speech in favor of this bill, had reflected quite severely on what he termed the factious opposition to the Administration, which might be salutary to a monarchy, but was highly inappropriate in a government so republican as ours.]

IF

F this doctrine were then to be collected from the history of the world, can it now be doubted, since the experience of the last twenty-five years? Go to France-once revolutionary, now imperial France-and ask her whether factious power or intemperate opposition be the more fatal to freedom and happiness.

2. Perhaps at some moment, when the eagle eye of her master is turned away, she may whisper to you to behold the demolition of Lyons, or the devastation of La Vendée. Perhaps she will give you a written answer.

3. Draw near the fatal lamp-post, and by its flickering light read it as traced in characters of blood that flowed from the guillotine," Faction is a demon-faction out of power is a demon enchained-faction vested with the attributes of rule is a Moloch of destruction !"

4. In this question I assuredly have a very deep interest, but it is the interest of the citizen only. My public career, I hope, will not continue long. Should it please the Disposer of

'events to permit me to see the great interest of this nation con⚫fided to men who will secure its rights by firmness, moderation, and impartiality abroad, and at home cultivate the arts of peace, encourage honest industry in all its branches, dispense equal justice to all classes of the community, and thus administer the Government in the true spirit of the Constitution, as a trust for the people, not as the property of a party, it will be to me utterly unimportant by what political epithet they may be characterized.

5. As a private citizen, grateful for the blessings I may enjoy, and yielding a prompt obedience to every legitimate demand that can be made upon me, I shall rejoice, as far as my little sphere may extend, to foster the same dispositions among those who surround me.

GASTON.

80. 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.

2. 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.

3. All the intelligence which controlled the destiny and upheld the dominion of republican Rome, was confined to the