neighbor, but we have so far recovered a just temper of mind, as to refrain from trampling upon an injured and brokenspirited people, or from insulting them and the world with offers of liberty and the extension of free institutions. As we have been unjust and violent, even for that very reason we may be the more magnanimous. The most judicious have inclined, however, to think that we have no prospect of a present peace with Mexico; that a change of rulers will be necessary to secure one. They, therefore, occupy themselves with discussing the alternatives of the entire conquest and occupation of Mexico, or the occupation of a defensive line, to be assumed by us as a line of

division.

It is in favor of a defensive line, to be fixed by ourselves, that the distinguished Senator from South Carolina has taken his stand, in a speech not unworthy of himself, or of his reputation: as the occasion, so was the argument; grand, weighty, momentous, and developing the very heart and substance of that system which he has formed to himself, out of the public and private experience of his life. Versed equally in the real and the written history of nations, and observing in their rise and decline, the action of irresistible circumstances, he predicts boldly, that as States have hitherto fallen, so they must continue to fall, through a neglect of the policy to which they owed their rise. The Senator is no fatalist, no predestinarian; his faith in cause and effect is absolute. It is evident to him, that the moral diseases of states are no less real or fatal than those of the body; that a nation which deserts its original policy rushes to as certain decay and disorganization as a man who deserts his first principles.

"Mr. President, there are some propositions too clear for argument, and before such a body as the Senate, I should consider it a loss of time to undertake to prove that to incorporate Mexico would be hostile to, and in conflict with our free popular institutions, and in the end subversive of them.

"Sir, he who knows the American Constitntion well-he who has daily studied its character he who has looked at history, and knows what has been the effect of conquests on free states invariably, will require no proof at my hands to show that it would be entirely hostile to the institutions of the country, to

"But the evil will not end there. The process will go on. The same process by which the power would be transferred from the States to the Union, will transfer the whole from this department of the government (I speak of the legislature) to the Executive. All the added power and added patronage which conquest will create, will pass to the Executive. In the end you put in the hands of the Executive the power of conquering you. You give to it, sir, such splendor, such means, that the principle of proscription which unfortunately prevails in our country will be greater at every presidential dure. The end of it will be, that that branch election than our institutions can possibly enof the government will become all-powerful, and the result is inevitable-anarchy and despotism. It is as certain as that I am this day addressing

the Senate.

"Sir, let it not be said that Great Britain furnishes an example to the contrary. **** Let it be remembered that of all governments that ever existed affording any protection whatever to liberty, the English government far transcends them all in that respect. She can bear more patronage in proportion to her population and wealth than any government of that form that ever existed; nay, to go farther, than can despotism in its lowest form. I will not go into the philosophy of this. That would take me farther from the track than I

desire.

"But I will say in a very few words, it results from the fact that her Executive and her conservative branch of the legislature are both hereditary. The Roman government may have exceeded and did exceed the British government in its power for conquest; but no people ever did exist, and probably never will exist, with such a capacity for conquest as that people. But the capacity of Rome to hold subjected provinces, was as nothing compared to that of Great Britain, and hence, as soon as the Roman power passed from Italy beyond the Adriatic on one side, and the Alps on the other, and the Mediterranean, their liberty fell prostrate-the Roman people became a rabble-corruption penetrated everywhere, and violence and anarchy ruled the day. Now, we see England with dependent provinces not less numerous, scarcely not less populous, I believe, though I have not examined the records; we see her going on

without any serious danger to the govern

ment.

"Yet the English have not wholly escaped. Although they have retained their liberty and have not fallen into anarchy and despotism, yet we behold the population of England crushed to the earth by the superincumbent weight of debt. Reflecting on that government, I have often thought that there was only one way in which it could come to an end-that the weight of the pediment would crush it. Look at the neighboring island of Ireland, and instead of finding in her identity, we find that England has to support her out of her laboring and vigorous population-out of her vast machinery and capital, and keep up a peace establishment almost beyond her means. Shall we, with these certain and inevitable consequences in a government better calculated to resist them than any other, adopt such a ruinous policy, and reject the lessons of experience? So much then, Mr. President, for holding Mexico as a province."

the

"There are some propositions," says distinguished Senator, "too clear for argument, and before such a body as the Senate, I should consider it a loss of time to undertake to prove, that to incorporate Mexico would be hostile to, and in conflict with, our free popular institutions:" but he is here addressing the Senate of the United States, which is the representative body of all the States; can any man doubt the sincerity of the remark? Does not the veteran statesman know the sentiments of that august body? Let us then entertain no fears that Mexico will be seized upon and annexed, for we have his word for it, that the Senate know that such an act would be at variance with the spirit and genius of this nation.

The Senator speaks for the nation, in its past, its present and its future; he declares the law that governs the destiny of Republics, but the grandeur of his argument is somewhat diminished by a necessary distinction between the polity of the nation and the polity of individual States.

"The next reason which my resolutions assign, is, that it is without example or precedent, either to hold Mexico as a province, or to incorporate her into our Union. No example of such a line of policy can be found. We have conquered many of the neighboring tribes

of Indians, but we never thought of holding them in subjection-never of incorporating them into our Union. I know farther, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race-the

| free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of incorporating an Indian race, for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes.

"I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the government of the white man. The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race. That error destroyed the social arrangement which formed the basis of society. The Portuguese and ourselves have escapedthe Portuguese at least to some extent—and we are the only people on this continent which have made revolutions without anarchy. And yet it is professed and talked about to erect those Mexicans into a territorial government, and place them on an equality with the people of the United States. I protest utterly against such a project.

"Sir, it is a remarkable fact, that in the whole history of man, as far as my knowledge extends, there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored races being found equal to the establishment of popular rights, although by far the largest portion of the human family is composed of these races. And even in the savage state we scarcely find them anywhere with equal government, except it be our noble savages-for noble I will call them. They for the most part had free institutions, but they are easily sustained amongst a savage people. Are we to overlook this fact? Are we to associate with ourselves as equals, companions, and fellow-citizens, the Indians and half-breeds of Mexico? Sir, I should consider such a thing as fatal to our institutions."

It is the settled policy of a majority of this nation to recognize no political differnecessarily arise from age, sex, and mental ences among men, excepting those which sanity, and it is an equally established policy of a minority, to regard no race as capable of liberty but the Caucasian or white race. Because liberty did not originate with the nation as a whole, but was first recognized and established in the individual States, they were regarded-and must be regarded as the defenders and sources of private liberty; nor was the Constitution itself formed by slaves,-its authors were the freemen of the nation, and they could extend it to whom they pleased. And yet, the number of persons granted by the States has been too small of other races to whom liberty has been for a satisfactory proof that they are capable of liberty. It is not yet proved that Republican institutions can exist even

in all white nations of the Caucasian tribe; and of that tribe, which embraces a vast portion of the human race, only here and there a free nation, inconsiderable in numbers but powerful in character and intelligence, has been able to establish liberty. But, leaving untouched the question of the capability of various races, we know that republican institutions are the most difficult of all others to be preserved, because they rest upon a certain moral superiority of the people, or rather of the majority of the people, which appears in their Constitutions, their Manners, and their Religion. It has never happened in any age that a stupid, cowardly, and faithless nation have attained to permanent freedom. Free institutions are not proper to the white man, therefore, but to the courageous, upright and moral man; and if a race of mongrels or negroes, educated so far as to organize a society, were found to have these qualities, it could not be denied that they were capable of free institutions. We, a nation derived from the Saxon, Norman and Celtic races, claim to be capable of liberty, because we and our ancestors have always discovered more or less of the republican virtues-and for no other reason-not inquiring whether those virtues were an immediate gift of Heaven, or a natural inheritance, or an effect of education. The framers of the Constitution did not extend liberty to the enslaved colored population of the States: the liberation of slaves was a right which all the States, whether of the North or South, reserved for their private exercise, to hasten, delay, or refuse, at their private pleasure. The slave must be freed before he could sustain a relation of freedom to the Nation itself, and his liberty lay in the gift of his master, and of the Individual State.

It is necessary, therefore, to protest against this doctrine of the Senator, that "ours is the government" (solely)" of the white man," for by the admission of this doctrine he would deny to the Individual States that great power to confer liberty and free suffrage upon whom they pleased, be they Indian, African, or mongrel, according to the Sovereign Will of the people. This government is not merely a government of the white man, but of whomsoever the Individual State shall see fit to make free.

Amid these reflections suggested by the Senator, himself a great example of republican and native virtue, one is startled by the following remarks :

"It has been the work of fortunate circumstances or a combination of circumstances, a succession of fortunate incidents of some kind, which give to any people a free government. It is a very difficult task to make a Constitution to last, though it may be supposed by some that they can be made to order and furnished at the shortest notice. Sir, this admirable Constitution of our own was the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances. It was superi

or to the wisdom of the men who made it. It was the force of circumstances which induced

them to adopt many of its wise provisions. Well, sir, of the few nations who have had the good fortune to adopt self-government, few have had the good fortune long to preserve that government; for it is harder to preserve than to form it. Few people, after years of prosliberty is held; and I fear, Senators, that is our perity, remember the tenure by which their

own condition; I fear that we shall continue to involve ourselves until our own system becomes

a ruin."

This observation of the Senator, that our admirable Constitution was the work of fortunate circumstances; that it stands, so to speak, in the palm of fortune, to be cast down as it was raised up, at her pleasure; agrees better with the rhetoric of a military adventurer, than of a grave and wise legislator. Nor does it add the least force to that prediction of the destiny of this Union, uttered in the same breath with it. Predictions, if they be not inspired, to gain respect, must rest upon a knowledge of history and of the laws that govern human events; if we believe that fortune presides over those events, it shows more vanity than discretion in us, to predict their issue, or even to raise a finger to control them. But it is not so: the agents in the affairs of men are themselves men, or rather the passions and the reason of men; and those who predict their course, predict from their estimate of the force of passion and reason in men themselves, be they a legislative body or a nation. Had not the Senator known this, he would not have ventured to predict the fall of this Union. Was it by a mighty and incommunicable logic, that he ventured in the same breath to predict the fall of our institutions, and declare them the work of happy accidents?

to raise them on lawless chance, and then declare the law of their continuance? to give them first to fortune and then to the gods?

Absurd conclusion of the Senator! This nation have fortune in their hands, and can whirl her idle wheel backward or forward at their pleasure. They have but to agree that honor and honesty shall rule, and they rule that the Constitution shall remain, and it remains. On that side they have a divine, an omnipotent authority; on the other they are powerless. On the one side, they have fortune-on the other, divinity; here chance, there reason; here favor, there honor; here lying, there truth; here robbery, peculation, conquest, fear, and the sinking of all in mere despond; there law observed, credit, equity, hope, and the fruit of all the past.

And yet it was only by a figure of rhetoric that the orator appealed to Fortune, to inspire us with a salutary terror; and when he afterward points out the true cause of our danger, and shows that it is rather through forgetfulness that we are falling, it is evident that he is truly no worshipper of Fortune, but a firm believer in the laws of Reason and of Nature.

"Sir, there is no solicitude now for liberty. Who talks of liberty when any great question comes up? Here is a question of the first magnitude as to the conduct of this war; do you hear anybody talk about its effect upon our liberties and our free institutions? No, sir. That was not the case formerly. In the early stages of our government the great anxiety was, how to preserve liberty. The great anxiety now, is for the attainment of mere military glory. In the one we are forgetting the other. The maxim of former times was, that power is always stealing from the many to the few; the price of liberty was perpetual vigilance. They were constantly looking out and watching for danger. Not so now. Is it because there has been any decay of liberty among the people? Not at all. I believe the love of liberty was

never more ardent, but they have forgotten the tenure of liberty by which alone it is preserved. "We think we may now indulge in everything with impunity, as if we held our charter of liberty by "right divine"--from heaven itself. Under these impressions we plunge into war, we contract heavy debts, we increase the patronage of the Executive, and we talk of a crusade to force our institutions, of liberty, upon all people. There is no species of extravagance which our people imagine will endanger their liberty in any degree. Sir, the hour is approaching--the day of retribution will come. It will

This warning comes from no noisy declaimer, or heated enthusiast. It is the voice of years and of experience. It is not a trope, or stroke of rhetoric; it is the plain announcement of a fact. We have secured our liberty, and believe that it will remain secure, while we are occupied in destroying that of other nations. We think that by augmenting our power we shall only perfect our freedom; forgetful that not power, merely, but lawful forms of power, are the support of freedom. Our power may indeed fret and spend itself in vast enterprises; but we are losing the grand privilege of freemen, to control the councils of the nation: we may retain our domestic freedom, but we are powerless in the affairs of our country. Party Organization, the sole lever of the politician, neglected by one party, and skillfully employed by the other, has wrested the sceptre from our gripe; we have allowed ourselves to believe in Public Opinion, until, too late, it is discovered that Party Organizations are manufactories of public opinion. We have neglected to manufacture a quantum of true and liberal opinion on the side of Justice and the Constitution, and the consequences are just beginning to be felt by ourselves and by the world.

As it was not by fortune nor the concurrence of fortunate accidents, that we arrived at our present condition, but by strenuous and virtuous endeavor for our country and kind, so it will not be by evil fortune that we fall, if fall we must, but by the neglect of those means by which we rose. And what were those means? The purifying first of our own, and next of other minds; the banishment of all but the most elevated passions, the trial of all public questions by the rule of private morality; the fearless and spirited declaration of right opinion, in the face of unpopularity and false enthusiasm, by all who can speak or write with force or with discretion; the constant inculcation of the faith in principles, that principles which execute themselves," and must be are strictly the expression of divine laws proclaimed and obeyed by all men and nations who are ambitious of power, or of