HENRY W. HILLIARD.-S. S. PRENTISS. 89 enjoy the sublime destiny of returning these blessings to their ancient seat; then will it be ours to give the priceless benefits of our free institutions, and the pure and healthful light of the gospel, back to the dark family which has so long lost both truth and freedom; then may Christianity plant herself there, and while with one hand she points to the Polynesian isles, rejoicing in the late-recovered treasure of revealed truth, with the other present the Bible to the Chinese. It is our duty to aid in this great work. I trust we shall esteem it as much our honor as our duty. Let us not, like some of the British missionaries, give them the Bible in one hand and opium in the other, but bless them only with the pure word of truth. I hope the day is not distant-soon, soon may its dawn ariseto shed upon the farthest and the most benighted of nations the splendor of more than a tropical sun. HENRY W. HILLIARD.* 65. THE FAMINE IN IRELAND. In THERE lies upon the other side of the wide Atlantic a beautiful island, famous in story and in song. It has given to the world more than its share of genius and of greatness. It has been prolific in statesmen, warriors, and poets. Its brave and generous sons have fought successfully in all battles but its own. wit and humor it has no equal; while its harp, like its history, moves to tears by its sweet but melancholy pathos. In this fair region God has seen fit to send the most terrible of all those fearful ministers who fulfil his inscrutable decrees. The earth has failed to give her increase; the common mother has forgotten her offspring, and her breast no longer affords them their accustomed nourishment. Famine, gaunt and ghastly famine, has seized a nation with its strangling grasp; and unhappy Ireland, in the sad woes of the present, forgets, for a moment, the gloomy history of the past. In battle, in the fulness of his pride and strength, little recks the soldier whether the hissing bullet sing his sudden requiem, or the cords of life are severed by the sharp steel. But he who dies of hunger, wrestles alone, day after day, with his grim and unrelenting enemy. He has no friends to cheer him in the terrible conflict; for if he had friends how could he die of hunger? *U. S. Representative from Alabama. He has not the hot blood of the soldier to maintain him; for his foe, vampire-like, has exhausted his veins. Who will hesitate to give his mite, to avert such awful results ? Give, then, generously and freely. Recollect, that in so doing, you are exercising one of the most godlike qualities of your nature, and at the same time enjoying one of the greatest luxuries of life. We ought to thank our Maker that he has permitted us to exercise equally with himself that noblest of even the Divine attributes, benevolence. Go home and look at your family, smiling in rosy health, and then think of the pale, famine-pinched cheeks of the poor children of Ireland; and you will give, according to your store, even as a bountiful Providence has given to you-not grudgingly, but with an open hand; for the quality of benevolence, like that of mercy, "Is not strained; It droppeth like the gentle rain from Heaven, S. S. PRENTISS.* 66. REPUBLICS. THE name of REPUBLIC is inscribed upon the most imperishable monuments of the species, and it is probable that it will continue to be associated, as it has been in all past ages, with whatever is heroic in character, and sublime in genius, and elegant and brilliant in the cultivation of arts and letters. It would not be difficult to prove that the base hirelings who have so industriously inculcated a contrary doctrine, have been compelled to falsify history and abuse reason. It might be asked, triumphantly, what land has ever been visited with the influences of liberty, that has not flourished like the spring? What people has ever worshipped at her altars without kindling with a loftier spirit and putting forth more noble energies? Where has she ever acted that her deeds have not been heroic ? Where has she ever spoken, that her eloquence has not been triumphant and sublime? With respect to ourselves, would it not be enough to say that we live under a form of government and in a state of society to which the world has never yet exhibited a parallel? Is it then nothing to be free? How many nations, in the whole annals of *U. S. Representative from Mississippi. HUGH S. LEGARÉ.-ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 91 human kind, have proved themselves worthy of being so? Is it nothing that we are republicans? Were all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other title? Is it nothing, that so many independent sovereignties should be held together in such a confederacy as ours? What does history teach us of the difficulty of instituting and maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of consequence, ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so much perfection and on so grand a scale? For, can any thing be more striking and sublime, than the idea of an imperial republic, spreading over an extent of territory more immense than the empire of the Cæsars, in the accumulated conquests of a thousand years-without præfects or proconsuls or publicans-founded in the maxims of common sense-employing within itself no arms, but those of reasonand known to its subjects only by the blessings it bestows or perpetuates, yet capable of directing, against a foreign foe, all the energies of a military despotism,-a republic, in which men are completely insignificant, and principles and laws exercise, throughout its vast dominion, a peaceful and irresistible sway, blending in one divine harmony such various habits and conflicting opinions, and mingling in our institutions the light of philosophy with all that is dazzling in the associations of heroic achievement and extended domination, and deep-seated and formidable power! HUGH S. LEGARÉ.* 67. A MONUMENT TO WASHINGTON. FELLOW-CITIZENS, let us seize this occasion to renew to each other our vows of allegiance and devotion to the American Union, and let us recognize in our common title to the name and the fame of Washington, and in our common veneration for his example and his advice, the all-sufficient centripetal power, which shall hold the thick clustering stars of our confederacy in one glorious constellation forever! Let the column which we are about to construct be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual union! Let the foundations be laid; let the superstructure be built up and cemented; let each stone be raised and riveted, in a spirit of national brotherhood! And * U. S. Representative from South Carolina. may the earliest ray of the rising sun-till that sun shall set to rise no more-draw forth from it daily, as from the fabled statue of antiquity, a strain of national harmony, which shall strike a responsive chord in every heart throughout the republic! Proceed, then, fellow-citizens, with the work for which you have assembled. Lay the corner-stone of a monument which shall adequately bespeak the gratitude of the whole American people to the illustrious father of his country. Build it to the skies you cannot outreach the loftiness of his principles. Found it upon the massive and eternal rock: you cannot make it more enduring than his fame. Construct it of the peerless Parian marble: you cannot make it purer than his life. Exhaust upon it the rules and principles of ancient and of modern art : you cannot make it more proportionate than his character. But let not your homage to his memory end here. Think not to transfer to a tablet or a column the tribute which is due from yourselves. Just honor to Washington can only be rendered by observing his precepts and imitating his example. Similitudine decoremus. He has built his own monument. We, and those who come after us, in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians. This wide-spread republic is the future monument to Washington. Maintain its independence. Uphold its constitution. Preserve its union. Defend its liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom to all within its boundaries, and shedding light and hope and joy upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world, and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may fully testify our veneration for him this, this alone can adequately illustrate his services to mankind. Nor does he need even this. The republic may perish; the wide arch of our ranged union may fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone by stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues shall anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues shall prolong the fame, of George Washington. ROBERT C. WINTHROP.* * U. S. Representative from Massachusetts. 68. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. THE gentleman from South Carolina* has painted, in the most glowing colors and fascinating forms, the glorious advantages to the South of a dissolution of this Union. But is there not another side to this picture ?—and to this I beg the gentlemen to turn their calm and dispassionate attention. Before they take this fearful plunge, let them look over the precipice on which they stand into the yawning gulf beneath. On the other side of this picture is written, in flaming capitalstreason; rebellion; civil war, with all its fearful consequences. Let it be remembered, that no state can go out of this Union until it has conquered all the rest. When one state is gone, no two remain united. We have heard of the benefits of destroying this Union; but what will be its cost to those who may attempt it? From imaginary ills, they fly to "others that they know not of." They now complain of taxation ! But what will be the taxation necessary to raise and sustain armies and navies to contend against this government ?- —a government which now, with fond and parental affection, guards and protects the South. But taxation would be the smallest item in the frightful catalogue of their calamities. There is still another leaf in this book, to which gentlemen should look. And can they behold it with indifference? It is the page on which posterity will write the epitaph of the authors of the destruction of this happy and glorious Union; of those who should involve us in all the horrors of civil war; who should arm father against son, and brother against brother; who should destroy this bright and glorious example-the only free government on earth. How deep and how loud would be their denunciations, how bitter and how blasting would be the curses, with which posterity would brand the memories of those men ! And will not their sentence be just? Where will they look for extenuation or excuse? Taxation !—it is imaginary; not real. All contributions here are voluntary; not compulsory. No people under heaven are half so lightly taxed, or half so highly blessed. In other countries, the people are taxed twenty times the amount, to support despots; imposed, not by themselves, but by arbitrary power. Compared with this country, in England taxation is as eighteen to one; yet they submit, and we rebel. *Mr. McDuffie. |