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.

G. M'DUFFIE,

XIX. - OBJECTS OF THE MEXICAN WAR.

SIR, I propose to hold a plain talk to-day; and I say that, according to my best judgment, the object of this bill is pat ronage, office, the gratification of friends. This very measure for raising ten regiments creates four or five hundred officers, colonels, subalterns; and not them only,- for all these I feel some respect, but there are also paymasters, contractors, persons engaged in the transportation service, commissaries, even down to sutlers, et id omne genus, people who handle the public money without facing the foe, one and all of whom are true descendants, or, if not, true representatives of Ancient Pistol, who said,

"I shall sutler be

Unto the camp, and profits will accrue."

Sir, I hope, with no disrespect for the applicants and the aspirants, and the patriots (and among them are some sincere patriots) who would fight for their country, and those others who are not ready to fight, but who are willing to be paid, — with due respect for all of them according to their several degrees and their merits, I hope they will all be disappointed. I hope that, as the pleasant season advances, the whole may find it for their interest to place themselves, of mild mornings, in the cars, and take their destination to their respective places of honorable private occupation and of civil employment. They have my good wishes that they may find the way to their homes from the Avenue and the Capitol, and from the purlieus of the President's house, in good health themselves, and that they may find their families all very happy to receive them.

But, sir, to speak more seriously, this war was waged for the object of creating new States on the southern frontier of the United States out of Mexican territory, and with such population as could be found resident thereupon. I have opposed this object. I am against all accessions of territory to form new States. And this is no matter of sentimentality, which I am to parade before mass-meetings or before my constituents at home. It is not a matter with me of declamation or of regret, or of expressed It is a matter of firm, unchangeable purpose. I

repugnance.

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yield nothing to the force of circumstances that have occurred, or that I can consider as likely to occur. And therefore I say, sir, that if I were asked to-day whether, for the sake of peace, I would take a treaty for adding two new States to the Union on our southern border, I would say No!-distinctly, No! And I wish every man in the United States to understand that to be my judgment and my purpose.

I said upon our southern border, because the present proposition takes that locality. I would say the same of the western the north-eastern, or of any other border. I resist to-day, and for ever, and to the end, any proposition to add any foreign territory, south or west, north or east, to the States of this Union as they are constituted and held together under the constitution. Sir, I see well enough all the adverse indications. But I am sustained by a deep and a conscientious sense of duty; and while supported by that feeling, and while such great interests are at stake, I defy auguries, and ask no omen but my country's cause!

WEBSTER.

XX. — UNJUST NATIONAL ACQUISITIONS.

I.

MR. PRESIDENT, the uneasy desire to augment our territory has depraved the moral sense and blighted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which Time has written for us. Through and in them all I see nothing but the inflexible execution of that old law which ordains, as eternal, the cardinal rule, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, nor any thing which is his." Since I have lately heard so much about the dismemberment of Mexico, I have looked back to see how, in the course of events, which some call "Providence," it has fared with other nations who engaged in this work of dismemberment.

I see that in the latter half of the eighteenth century, three powerful nations, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, united in the dismemberment of Poland. They said, too, as you say, "It is our destiny." They "wanted room." Doubtless each of these thought, with his share of Poland, his power was too strong ever to fear invasion, or even insult. One had his California, another his New Mexico, and the third his Vera Cruz.

Did they remain untouched and incapable of harm? Alas! no-far, very far, from it. Retrib'utive justice must fulfill its destiny too. A very few years pass off, and we hear of a new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named "armed soldier of

Democracy," Napoleon. He ravages Austria, covers her land with blood, drives the Northern Cæsar from his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now remember how her power trampled upon Poland. Did she not pay dear, very dear, for her California?

But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see this same Napoleon, the blind instrument of Providence, at work there. The thunders of his cannon at Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland's wrongs; and the successors of the Great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the sandy plains that surround their capital, right glad if they may escape captivity and death.

But how fares it with the Autocrat of Russia? Is he secure in his share of the spoils of Poland? No. Suddenly we see, sir, six hundred thousand armed men marching to Moscow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now? Far from it. Blood, slaughter, desolation, spread abroad over the land; and, finally, the conflagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia closes the retribution: she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of her impotent neighbor.

II.

MR. PRESIDENT, a mind more prone to look for the judgments of Heaven in the doings of men than mine can not fail, in all unjust acquisitions of territory, to see the providence of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted up, that the nations might behold the scene. As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved and rolled upward, and yet higher, till its flames licked the stars, and fired the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God of the nations was writing, in characters of flame, on the front of His throne, that doom that shall fall upon the strong nation which tramples in scorn upon the weak.

And what fortune awaits him, the appointed executor of this work, when it was all done? He, too, conceived the notion that his destiny pointed onward to universal dominion. France was too small,-Europe he thought should bow down before him. But as soon as this idea takes possession of his soul, he too becomes powerless. His Terminus must recede too. Right there, while he witnessed the humiliation, and, doubtless, meditated the subjugation of Russia, He who holds the winds in His fist, gathered the snows of the North, and blew them upon his

*Pronounced Ya'na.

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six hundred thousand men. They fled,-they froze,-they perished.

And now the mighty Napoleon, who had resolved on universal dominion, he, too, is summoned to answer for the violation of that ancient law, "Thou shalt not covet any thing which is thy neighbor's." How is the mighty fallen! He, beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now, finally, a prisoner on the rock of St. Helena, and there, on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the death-bed of the mighty conqueror. All his annexations have come to that! His last hour is now at hand; and he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as with the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless, still, —even as the beggar, so he died.

On the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only Power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who do not rule in righteousness shall perish from the earth. He has found "room," at last. And France, she too has found "room." Her "eagles" now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po, and the Borys'thenes. They have returned home, to their old aërie, between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees.

So shall it be with yours. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras; they may wave, with insolent triumph, in the halls of the Montezumas; the armed men of Mexico may quail before them: but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of Justice, may call down against you a Power in the presence of which the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into ashes!

THOMAS CORWIN.

MR. PRESIDENT, I go for a national highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific. And I go against all schemes of individuals or of companies, and especially those who come here and ask of the Congress of the United States to give themselves and their assigns the means of making a road and taxing the people for the use of it. If they should make it, they are to tax us for the use of it-tax the people eight or ten millions a year for using the road which their own money built. A fine scheme, that! But they would never build it, neither themselves nor their assigns. It would all end in stockjobbing. I repudiate the whole idea, sir. I go for a national highway- no stockjobbing.

We find all the localities of the country precisely such as a national central road would require. The bay of San Francisco, the finest in the world, is in the center of the western coast of North America; it is central, and without a rival. It will accommodate the commerce of that coast, both north and south, up to the frozen regions, and down to the torrid zone. It is central in that respect. The commerce of the broad Pacific Ocean will center there. The commerce of Asia will center there. Follow the same latitude across the country, and it strikes the center of the valley of the Mississippi. It strikes the Missis sippi near the confluence of all the great waters which concen'trate in the valley of the Mississippi. It comes to the center of the valley. It comes to St. Louis. Follow the prolongation of that central line, and you find it cutting the heart of the great States between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, a part of Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, they are all traversed or touched by that great central line.

We own the country, from sea to sea,- from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and upon a breadth equal to the length of the Mississippi, and embracing the whole temperate zone. Three thousand miles across, and half that breadth, is the magnificent parallelogram of our domain. We can run a national central road through and through the whole distance, under our flag and under our laws. Military reasons require us to make it; for troops and munitions must go there. Political reasons require us to make it; it will be a chain of union between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Commercial reasons demand it from us; and here I touch a boundless field, dazzling and bewildering the imag ination from its vastness and importance. The trade of the Pacific Ocean, of the western coast of North America, and of eastern Asia, will all take its track; and not only for ourselves, but for posterity.

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country, will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it- the last and greatest. Let us act up to the great