DANGERS OF OUR PROSPERITY.

41

at all. Whoever else may forsake the sacred cause of liberty, we at least must live where freemen live, or fall where freemen perish! REV. WM. A. SCOTT, D.D.

XV. - DANGERS OF OUR PROSPERITY.

THE danger, my countrymen, is that we shall become intoxicated by our amazing physical triumphs. Because, within the memory of most of us, the lightning has been harnessed to the newsman's car, and the steam-engine has not only brought the ends of the earth into proximity, but has also provided a working power, which, requiring no nutriment, and susceptible of no fatigue, almost releases living creatures from the necessity of toil, because of these most marvelous discoveries, we are in danger of believing that like wonders may be achieved in the social and moral world.

But be it remembered that, in all our discoveries, no substitute has been found for conscience, and no machine to take the place of reason. The telegraph cannot legislate, nor the locomotive educate. The mind is still the mind, and must obey its own higher laws. Our most pressing needs are such as no mechanism can supply. What we most lack is true, earnest, sincere, faithful, loyal, self-sacrificing men. Without these, it is in vain that we extend our territory from ocean to ocean, and quarry gold as we do rocks. These physical accessions, coming so suddenly upon us, do but increase our peril. Adversity we might bear, and be the better for it. But how shall we bear this gush of seeming prosperity? Seeming, I say, because time alone can determine whether it is real.

If, my countrymen, with all these excitements, we do not become a nation of reckless adventurers,-gamblers, perhaps, would be the proper word, if we do not cut ourselves entirely loose from our ancient moorings, but still hold fast to our integrity, our very continence will prove that there is still some sterling virtue left. For never was there so much reason for the prayer, "Deliver us from temptation." After all our conquests, the most difficult yet remains, the victory over ourselves. We have now to answer, under untried difficulties, that gravest of questions, "What constitutes a State?" And the answer must be like that which was given long, long ago:

"Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain.”

MENTION has been made of the word "materialism." I hold, sir, a maxim on this matter which personally I have felt of exceeding consequence. It is time the truth had gone forth, to be held as a maxim for evermore, THAT IN PROPORTION TO THE DEPTH OF ONE'S FAITH, IS THE ABSENCE OF UNEASINESS BECAUSE OF DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. Materialism never arises from knowledge; it is, on the other hand, a certification of deficiency, on the part of the mind cherishing it. It consists, not in the exposition of any positive knowledge, but in the dogmatic assertion, that beyond the line of such knowledge there lies nothing more.

To deal with materialism, then, what is our course? Never to deny or undervalue truth distinctly laid down, but to deny that what is known is a limit: that the system pretending to be everything is, whatever its special value, the everything it pretends not to imagine that man ought not to study the laws of Nature, but to show him that beyond these, toward the region of sunset, there are powers which made and sustain even the entire of nature's fabrican august Being- even the Father of our spirits with whom, though the seasons change, and those stupendous orbs rest not in their courses, there is never variableness or shadow of turning.

PROFESSOR NICHOL.

XVII. FALSE NOTIONS OF OFFICE.

SIR, it were melancholy, indeed, if the only path to true glory were through official distinction. Were this to become the universal sentiment, I should tremble for the dignity of American character. Far distant be the day when we shall begin to value ourselves chiefly for what is extrinsic and factitious. What sentiment can be more anti-republican?

I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN! Is not this enough to boast of? or must we add, I have a commission I have a diploma - 1 carry written certificates of my respectability? Time was when the exclamation, I am a Roman citizen! was a passport every

IMPRESSMENT. OF AMERICANS.

48

where; and shall we, who acknowledge no aristocracy but that of nature, who respect no charter of nobility but that which the Almighty has given, by stamping us for men; shall we, THE PEOPLE, who call ourselves the fountain of all honor, and those to whom we delegate authority our servants-shall we prostrate ourselves before the images our own fiat has set up?

Away with such a degrading thought! We underrate ourselves as private citizens; we fail in proper self-respect, when we ascribe so much consequence to badges and places. And the evil is most pernicious in its influence upon young men, because their eyes are most likely to be dazzled by the pomp and circumstance of office. It seems to me that patriotism could not breathe a purer prayer than that all our youth might grow up and enter upon life with a determination to respect themselves for what they are intrinsically, and not for what the suffrages of others may make them. The individual man, with his immortal hopes and energies, would then be every thing, and the tinsel glories of station nothing. But now,

"Proud man,

Dressed in a little brief authority,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,
As make the angels weep."

TIMOTHY WALKER.

XVIII. — IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICANS.

SIR, the impressment of our seamen by Great Britain is an outrage to which we never can submit without national ignominy and debasement. This crime of impressment may justly be considered-posterity will so consider it as transcending the amount of all the other wrongs we have received.. Ships and merchandise belong to individuals, and may be valued; may be endured as subjects of negotiation. But men are the property of the nation. In every American face a part of our country's sovereignty is written. It is the living emblem a thousand times more sacred than the nation's flag itself— of its character, its independence, and its rights.

"But," say the British, "we want not your men; we want .only our own. Prove that they are yours, and we will surrender them." Baser outrage! more insolent indignity! that a free-born American must be made to prove his nativity to those who have previously violated his liberty, else he is to be held for ever as a slave! That before a British tribunal a British boarding

officer- a free-born American must be made to seal up the vouchers of his lineage, to exhibit the records of his baptism and his birth, to establish the identity that binds him to his parents, to his blood, to his native land, by setting forth in odious detail his size, his age, the shape of his frame, whether his hair is long or cropped-his marks like an ox or a horse of the măngerthat all this must be done as the condition of his escape from the galling thraldom of a British ship! Can we hear it, can we think of it, with any other than indignant feelings at our tarnished name and nation?

Sir, when this same insatiate foe, in the days of the Revolution, landed with seventeen thousand hostile troops upon our shores, the Congress of '76 declared our independence, and hurled defiance at the martial array of England! And shall we now hesitate? shall we bow our necks in submission? shall we make an ignominious surrender of our birthright under the plea that we are not prepared to defend it? No, Americans! Yours has been a pacific republic, and therefore has not exhibited military preparation; but it is a free republic, and therefore will it now, as before, soon command battalions, discipline, courage! Could a general of old by only stamping on the earth raise up armies, and shall a whole nation of freemen, at such a time, know not where to look for them? The soldiers of Bunker Hill, the soldiers of Bennington, the soldiers of the Wabash, the seamen of Tripoli, forbid it! RICHARD RUSH (July 4, 1812).

fice;

XIX. -WAR SOMETIMES A MORAL DUTY.

SIR, I dissent from the resolutions before us. I dissent because they would pledge me to the utter repudiation of physical force, at all times, in all countries, and under every circumstance. This I can not do; for, sir, when national rights are to be vindicated, I do not repudiate the resort to physical force - I do not abhor the use of arms. There are occasions when arms alone will sufwhen political ameliorations call for a drop of blood — for many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, sir, may be left to operate against opinion. But force must be used against force. The soldier is proof against an argument, but not against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with. But it is only the weaponed arm of the patriot, that can prevail against battalioned despotism. Therefore, sir, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say, that the

ay,

AGAINST UNDERHAND MEASURES.

45

King of Heaven, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Battles, bestows his benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril.

Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion, of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, yet, sir, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword? Stigmatize the sword? No! for in the passes of the Ty-rol' it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and through those craggy de-files' struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionist of Innsbruck!

Abhor the sword? Stigmatize the sword? No!- for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium -scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps, and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.t

for at its

Abhor the sword? Stigmatize the sword? No! blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by the redeeming magic of the sword, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud republic-prosperous, limitless, and invincible!

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.

XX. - AGAINST UNDERHAND MEASURES.

REVIEWING, sir, the political movements in Ireland for some years past, it would seem as if those principles of public virtue, which give to a people their truest dignity and their surest strength, had been systematically decried. Truth has been frittered away by expediency, generosity has been supplanted by selfishness, self-sacrifice has been lampooned as an ancient folly.

To repeal the Union, we are told it is essential that repealers should take offices!- to give the minister a decisive blow, it is expedient to equip the patriot hand with gold! Strenuously to oppose the minister, you must, first of all, beg of the minister, then be his very humble, and, if possible, conclude with being his much obliged servant! The financial statement between the two countries can not be properly made out, until some repeal account

Andrew Hofer, a gallant leader of the Tyrolese. Tried by court-martial, he was shot by his country's oppressors, Feb. 20, 1810.

+ Pronounced, Skelt.