THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

89

Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houscless heads of women and children? Iwas it hard labor and meals? spare was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea? was it some or all of these united that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that no one of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there have gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

EDWARD EVERETT.

LVIII.

THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

MR. PRESIDENT and gentlemen, I thank you for the honor you have done me by calling upon me to respond to a sentiment in behalf of the common schools of New England. I am all the more thankful, because it is too late in the day to require a vindication of common schools as an institution established by the Pilgrim Fathers. In their minds education was an integral element of the great republican idea included in every conception they could form for the organization of a State. Sir, under their rigid exterior the Puritans cherished an intense, a Hebrew faith in God and in everlasting realities; a faith such as shook the strings of David's harp, and fired the lips of the prophets. They were ever seeking to do God's will, and felt that God was with them. They did not seek for material success, but merely for the great elements of the permanent welfare of the individual and the State. They established and cherished the interests of education.

It has been said that external circumstances favored the singleness of purpose and the devotion to permanent realities by which they were distinguished. No doubt there is truth in this. Had they landed on a luxuriant shore, had golden placers opened before their feet, they might have been tempted to luxurious sensuality, and the material scramble for this world's goods. But for them there was no luxury, and their reliance was upon the manly elements that grow up in suffering and privation to their full strength. The inclement winter, and the waves dashing upon their icy rocks, drove them back upon the soil, and enabled their vision to detect what were the qualities that alone enable

man to assert his superiority over the elements, and wring the victory from the iron hand of nature.

This brings up the great fact which this talking, philosophical, material age needs to have reiterated, that no great thing was ever wrought save by an intense religious faith. It was faith in Providence, the faith that every hero maintains in great principles. I know that when we look into history we see more genial characters than the Puritans; but when we look for foundation-men, men who lay the Cyclopeän base of a republic, they alone were the men worthy of the work. God ordains that a republic is not proclaimed from noisy barricades and polytechnic schools. It is found hewn out rough in the quarry of suffering and endurance, and is laid in resolution and in prayer. God appoints for it a granite soil and granite men. The Pilgrims builded better than they knew; it was God that filled them with a great ideal, which they themselves did not comprehend. How else did they lay hold of the great fact that the state is more interested in the coming generation than in our own? This was the idea that animated the hearts of the Pilgrims.

I do not intend to attribute to them all the liberty and the great results which we behold around us. I know how much is due to the Hollander, how much to the generous toleration of Calvert. They are all so mixed up in our present institutions that, thank God! it is impossible for any party to claim a personal property in any part. But it is certain that here alone is a great and true republic. I do not forget Switzerland; but still I say, that here alone is a republic endowed with the power of a great and progressive development. We must remember Italy, stricken down and oppressed; France, where nothing is permanent, and where freedom is but a name; and that other country, where the Danube rolls beside the graves of martyred heroes, and which sends out her most distinguished son* and exile to plead her cause in a voice that shakes the nations. But here the only true republic has risen and expanded into greatness and power.

If we ask whence springs this giant republic, we must look back to that grand historical picture, with its fringe of dark roots, its back-ground of tossing winter waves, with mothers shielding their babes from the icy cold, and fathers treading the crackling snow! We must look back to that stern and manly people that laid there and then the foundation for free thought, free speech, and free schools.

*Kossuth, the Hungarian.

E. H. CHAPIN.

From a speech before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 1806, at the trial of Thomas O. Selfredge for shooting Charles Austin, who attacked him with a cowhide.

THE opposing counsel have contended, gentlemen of the jury, in order to establish the guilt of my client, that the right of selfdefense is not given by the law of civil society. It is founded, then, on the law of nature a law of higher authority than any human institution. Surely I need not tell you that the man who is daily beaten on the public exchange can not retain his standing in society by a resort to the laws. Recovering daily damages will rather aggravate the contempt of the community.

It is a most serious calamity for a man of high qualifications for usefulness, of a delicate sense of honor, to be driven to the necessity of repelling a brutal personal attack-of saving himself from the profanation of a ruffian's blow. Yet, should it become inevitable, he is bound to defend himself like a man; to summon all the energies of his soul, rise above ordinary maxims, poise himself on his own magnanimity, and hold himself responsible only to his God. Whatever may be the consequences, he is bound to bear them; to stand like Mount Atlas,

"When storms and tempests thunder on his brow,
And oceans break their billows at his feet."

Do not believe that I am inculcating opinions tending to disturb the peace of society. On the contrary, they are the only principles that can preserve it. It is more dangerous for the laws to give security to a man disposed to commit outrages on the persons of his fellow-citizens, than to authorize those, who must otherwise meet irreparable injury, to defend themselves at every hazard. I will not, if I can help it, leave it in the power of any daring miscreant to mutilate, maltreat, or degrade me. I respect the laws of my country; I revere the precepts of our holy religion; I should shudder at shedding human blood; I would practice moderation and forbearance, to avoid so terrible a calamity; yet, should I ever be driven to that impassable point where degradation and disgrace begin, may this arm shrink palsied from its socket, if I fail to defend my own honor!

SAMUEL DEXTER.

II. THE NATURE OF JUSTICE.

It "I

From the speech on the trial of Warren Hastings, June 6th, 1788. LET me call the attention of the court to the magnificent paragraph in which Mr. Hastings concludes his communication. will give you some idea of this man's notions of justice. hope," says Mr. Hastings, "it will not be a departure from official language to say, that the majesty of justice ought not to be approached without solicitation. She ought not to descend to inflame or provoke, but to withhold her judgment until she is called on to determine." Justice ought not to be approached without solicitation! Justice ought not to descend! But, my lords, do you, the judges of this land, and the expounders of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery, and call it justice? No! justice is not this halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagod; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed superstitious darkness and political dismay! No, my lords.

grove

of

In the happy reverse of all these, I turn from this disgusting caricature to the real image! Justice I have now before me, august and pure · the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men; where the mind rises, where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate, to hear their cry and to help them; to rescue and relieve, to succor and save; majestic from its mercy, venerable from its utility; uplifted without pride, firm without obduracy; beneficent in each preference, lovely though in her frown!

On that justice I rely, deliberate and sure, abstracted from all party purpose and political speculation, not in words, but in facts. You, my lords, who hear me, I conjure, by those rights it is your best privilege to preserve; by that fame it is your best pleasure to inherit; by all those feelings which refer to the first term in the series of existence, the original compact of our nature, our controlling rank in the creation. This is the call on all, to administer to truth and equity, as they would satisfy the laws; ay, as they would satisfy themselves with the most exalted bliss possible or conceivable for our nature, the self-approving consciousness of virtue, when the condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the world! My lords, I have done.

SHERIDAN.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE CHEROKEES.

93

III. THE UNITED STATES AND THE CHEROKEES.

In the Supreme Court of the United States, January, 1831, in the case of the Cherokees against the State of Georgia.

Ir is with no ordinary feelings that I am about to take leave of this cause. The existence of the remnant of a once great and mighty nation is at stake, and it is for your honors to say whether they shall be blotted out from the creation, in utter disregard of all our treaties. Their cause is one that must come home to every honest and feeling heart. They have been true and faithful to us, and have a right to expect a corresponding fidelity on our part. Our wish has been their law. We asked them to become civilized, and they became so. They have even adopted our resentments, and in our war with the Seminole tribes they voluntarily joined our arms, and gave effectual aid in driving back those barbarians from the very state that now oppresses them. They threw upon the field a body of men who proved, by their martial bearing, their descent from the noble race that were once the lords of these extensive forests.

May it please your honors, this people have refused to us no gratification which it has been in their power to grant. They are here now in the last extremity, and with them must perish the honor of the American name for ever. We have pledged, for their protection and for the guarantee of the remainder of their lands, the faith and honor of our nation a faith and honor never sullied, nor even drawn into question, until now. We promised them, and they trusted us. They trust us still. Shall they be deceived? They would as soon expect to see their rivers run upwards on their sources, or the sun roll back in his career, as that the United States would prove false to them, and false to the word so solemnly pledged by their Washington, and renewed and perpetuated by his illustrious successors.

With the existence of this people the faith of our nation, I repeat it, is fatally linked. The blow which destroys them quenches for ever our own glory; for what glory can there be, of which a patriot can be proud, after the good name of his country shall have departed? We may gather laurels on the field, and trophies on the ocean, but they will never hide this foul and bloody blot upon our escutcheon. "Remember the

Cherokee nation!" will be answer enough to the proudest boast that we can ever make- answer enough to cover with confusion the face and the heart of every man among us, in whose bosom the last spark of grace has not been extinguished.

I will hope for better things. There is a spirit that will yet