WHAT OUR COUNTRY WANTS.

AMIDST the bounties and blessings which Providence has showered upon her, amidst the successes of her arms, and the assurance of a final triumph in her present struggle, our country wants one thing which is essential to the enjoyment of the one, and the maintenance of the other. And that is a nationality-her danger is in her very strength, in the vastness of her territory, the boundless resources of her wealth, and the multitude of her population.

The Revolution left the feeble colonies united by a common sympathy, and a sense of common danger. That feeling wrought out the frame work of a common government, in the day when patriots and statesmen had control in the policy of the nation. But, for the last fifty years, we have been growing strangers and aliens to each other, from the remoteness at which we dwell from one another, and the diversity of the channels of our business and intercourse. Portland, in Maine, is, geographically, farther removed from her neighboring city of Portland,

in Oregon, than she is from Antwerp or Paris. And in business, they are separated by half the circuit of the globe.

The early generations that went out from the Atlantic States, to people the great West, have passed away, and, with them, the fond remembrances of early homes; while others, born upon the soil, and busy with their own affairs, ignore the tie that once served to bind together the widening regions of a common country.

But stronger in its influence even than this, is the crowd of distinct nationalities which have been attracted hither, by the cheapness of our soil and the freedom of our government, and now throng the rich regions of the West. Thousands upon thousands who share the protection of our government, and thrive upon the benefits which they derive from its institutions, cannot speak the language in which our Constitution is written, or its laws are published. The only things which they have in common with the native citizens, are the air they breathe, the soil they cultivate, the freedom they enjoy, and the rewards of a well protected industry which they share. There is no common chord of sympathy by which they can be moved; and the German and the Irish, the Norwegian and the Swede are slow to learn that a new nationality is yet to be formed, of which they are to be an element and a part.

Nor does the evil of this want of nationality stop with the mere weakening of the bond of union that binds the parts of our country together. It becomes, in the hand of designing men, an engine of positive mischief. It is made the source of sectional jealousies and local animosities, under the influence of which, the pride of country is sacrificed to that of the State; and the prosperity of one region becomes an object of jealousy and ill-will in another. This feeling is, moreover, cherished by the more immediate connexion there is between the citizen and his immediate State, in every thing that concerns him in his domestic interests, and the share he has in its government, than that which the people generally have with the administration of the Federal Government.

Mr. Calhoun had a field ready prepared at his hand, in which to cast the pestilent seed of State Rights, Nullification and Secession, under the guise of counteracting a tariff which other sections of a common country thought it for her interest to maintain, and under a still more palpable and sensitive pretence of guarding a cherished, local institution against the freedom of the press and the popular voice of more prosperous regions.

Add to all this the power which, in a country like ours, a few minds can practically exercise in controlling public opinion and feeling, and we can the more readily measure the importance of a sentiment of nationality

which shall be to a people, what instinct and uneducated conscience is to the individual-which shall start up, unbidden, and prompt one to repel an attack upon the honor of his country, as he would upon the good name of the mother that bore him.

But from the want of this training, in the growing strength and expansion of our country, we shall grow weaker every day, if the parts of this mighty whole cannot be bound more strongly and intimately together. Rail roads, domestic commerce, a common press, and the intercourse of individuals may do much. But there is something beyond all these required, to give vitality to that sensitiveness which goes to make up a proper national pride. Nor can we regard the very war in which we are engaged as otherwise than doing, in this respect, for our country, what no minor agency could effect.

When the echo of the gun from Sumter was repeatedfrom every valley and hill-side in our land, it found the nationality of the people, asleep. But it was not dead. No shock, perhaps, less powerful would have aroused a nation of planters, and merchants, and mechanics, to the peril of seeing this great nationality crumbling and falling to pieces, and becoming the scorn of the old world, as the crippled members of a once mighty empire. Nor was this all. In the effort to restore the nation again to its

integrity, the men of the loyal States forgot the lines that separated them in name. California and Minnesota, Maryland and New Hampshire followed the same flag into the battle, side by side, and shoulder to shoulder. And the men of Massachusetts and Illinois answered to the same watchword and countersign to the soldier from Ohio, as he stood sentry on the banks of the Mississippi, or among the wild fastnesses of Eastern Tennessee. It has been a nation's war, for a nation's glory, a nation's integrity, and a nation's independence. Europe has at last begun to measure with something of adequate estimate, the value of a nationality on this side the water, which, in her eagerness to see broken and dissevered, she had begun to despise, and looked forward to trample upon with impunity.

It is the great lesson of the day. Come what will, it should never be forgotten, that our country, united, nationalized, animated by a common will for a common cause, will stand as peerless in power as she has been prosperous and free.

The brain of the people should be taught, the heart of the people should be made to feel that the honor of the nation is in the charge of every freeman in the land. Let this lesson once be impressed upon the people of this country, and the world would learn to acknowledge that wherever her Starry Flag was floating, its folds sheltered