صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

ophy. Who is not proud, that our fathers were the compeers of Wolfe; that Burke, and Chatham spoke our mother tongue? Who does not look for the most prosperous eras of the world, when English blood shall warm the human bosom over the habitable breadth of every zone: when English literature shall come under the eye of the whole world: English intellectual wealth enrich every clime; and the manners, morals, and religion, of us and our parent country, spread civilization under the whole star-lighted heaven; and, in the very language of our deliberations, the hallowed voice of daily prayer shall arise to God, throughout every longitude of the sun's whole race.

"I would follow the course of ordinary experience; render the child independent of the parent; and from the resources of his own industry, skill, and prudence, rich, influential, and powerful, among nations. Then, if the period of age and infirmity shall, as God send it may never, but if it shall come, then, Sir, the venerated parent shall find shelter behind the strong right hand of her powerful descendant."

[blocks in formation]

"The policy of the gentleman from Virginia, calls him to a course of legislation resulting in the entire destruction of one part of this Union. Oppress New-England until she shall be compelled to remove her manufacturing labor and capital to the regions of iron, wool, and grain; and nearer to those of rice and cotton. Oppress New-England until she shall be compelled to remove her commercial labor and capital to New-York, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah. Finally, oppress that proscribed region, until she shall be compelled to remove her agricultural labor and capital-her agricultural capital? No, she cannot remove that. Oppress and compel her, nevertheless, to remove her agricultural labor to the far off West; and there people the savage valley, and cultivate the deep wilderness of the Oregon. She must, indeed, leave her agricultural capital; her peopled fields; her hills with culture carried to their tops; her broad deep bays; her wide, transparent lakes, long-winding rivers, and populous waterfalls; her delightful villages, flourishing towns, and wealthy cities. She must leave this land, bought by the treasure, subdued by the toil, defended by the

valor of men, vigorous, athletic, and intrepid; men, god-like in all making man resemble the moral image of his Maker; a land endeared, oh! how deeply endeared, because shared with women pure as the snows of their native mountains; bright, lofty, and overawing, as the clear, circumambient heavens, over their heads; and yet lovely as the fresh opening bosom of their own blushing and blooming June. Mine own romantic country,' must we leave thee? Beautiful patrimony of the wise and good; enriched from the economy, and ornamented by the labor and perseverance of two hundred years! Must we leave thee, venerable heritage of ancient justice and pristine faith? And, God of our fathers! must we leave thee to the demagogues who have deceived, and traitorously sold us? We must leave thee to them; and to the remnants of the Penobscots, the Pequods, the Mohicans, and Narragansetts; that they may lure back the far retired bear, from the distant forest, again to inhabit in the young wilderness, growing up in our flourishing cornfields and rich meadows; and spreading, with briars and brambles, over our most 'pleasant places.'

"All this shall come to pass, to the intent that New-England may again become a lair for wild beasts, and a hunting-ground for savages. The graves of our parents be polluted; and the place made holy by the first footsteps of our pilgrim forefathers, become profaned, by the midnight orgies of barbarous incantation. The evening wolf shall again howl on our hills, and the echo of his yell mingle once more with the sound of our waterfalls. The sanctuaries of God shall be made desolate. Where now a whole people congregate in thanksgiving for the benefactions of time, and in humble supplication for the mercies of eternity, there those very houses shall then be left without a tenant. The owl, at noon-day, may roost on the high altar of devotion, and the fox look out at the window,' on the utter solitude of a New-England Sabbath.

[ocr errors]

New-England shall, indeed, under this proscribing policy, be what Switzerland was under that of France. New-England, which, like Switzerland, is the eagle nest of freedom; New-England, where, as in Switzerland, the cradle of infant liberty was rocked by whirlwinds, in their rage;' New-Eng

land shall, as Switzerland was, in truth, be the immolated victim, where nothing but the skin remains unconsumed by the sacrifice;' New-England, as Switzerland had, shall have 'nothing left but her rocks, her ruins, and her demagogues.'

"The mind, Sir, capable of conceiving a project of mischief so gigantic, must have been early schooled, and deeply imbued with all the great principles of moral evil.

"What, then, Sir, shall we say of a spirit, regarding this event as a consummation devoutly to be wished ?—a spirit without one attribute, or one hope, of the pure in heart; a spirit which begins and ends every thing, not with prayer, but with imprecation; a spirit which blots from the great canon of petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread;' that, foregoing bodily nutriment, he may attain to a higher relish for that unmingled food, prepared and served up to a soul hungering and thirsting after wickedness;' a spirit which, at every rising sun, exclaims, "Hodie! hodie! Carthago delendu! "To-day, to-day! let NewEngland be destroyed!'

"Sir, Divine Providence takes care of his own universe. Moral monsters cannot propagate. Impotent of every thing but malevolence of purpose, they can no otherwise multiply miseries, than by blaspheming all that is pure, and prosperous, and happy. Could demon propagate demon, the universe might become a Pandemonium; but I rejoice that the Father of Lies can never become the father of liars. One 'adversary of God and man' is enough for one universe. Too much! Oh! how much too much for one nation."

99 1

1 Mr. Randolph could not withstand the unparalleled severity of this retort. He immediately left the Hall, and his voice was never raised there afterwards. Mr. Burges was excited to this reply, by the conduct of Mr. Randolph ; who had been pouring a storm of malediction and calumny upon New-England, and the former could endure it no longer. The weapons which Mr. Randolph had wielded with such effect against others, were now returned upon his own head, with tenfold power.

N

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER VIII.

Mr. McDuffie.—Mr. Burges replies to a Speech made by him on the Tariff.

ANOTHER gentleman, Mr. McDuffie, participated in the debate on the Tariff, and manifested a violence of feeling against New-England, not exceeded even by that of Mr. Randolph. Mr. McDuffie has been distinguished for hostility to the protective policy; and on the Resolution then under discussion, he made an argument against it, embracing the prominent objections to that measure. Mr. McDuffie has splendid talents, strong passions, and vehement enthusiasm. He is a veteran legislator, takes an important part in the deliberations of the House of Representatives, and is justly ranked among the most able politictians, in the Southern section of the country. In relation, however, to many national interests, his sentiments are too narrow and local; and his legislation, therefore, is not always adapted to secure the prosperity of the whole confederacy. Hence, he has frequently opposed the most salutary measures, seemingly because they originated in New-England, and would enhance her prosperity. During this session, and particularly in this debate, he exhibited more than his usual violence. Mr. Burges, in the course of his speech on the same Resolution, referred to the taunts and calumnies of Mr. McDuffie, and to the doctrines advanced by him in debate.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Mr. Burges, "he who has been at sea, knows that the inhabitants of that region, sport only in foul weather. In the sunshine and the calm, when the world of water is level and unmoving, every tenant of the ocean is still, and in repose. At such a time, if any cloud gives promise of something more than gentle airs, and the winds and the waters

1 During the last session of Congress, Mr. McDuffie gave evidence of a patriotism, which, in these times, it is delightful to commemorate.

begin to hold controversy; then, suddenly, the whole population of the mighty realm is at once awake and in motion. Not merely the nimble dolphin gives his bright eye, and dazzling side to the sunshine; but the black, uncouth porpoise, breaks above the water, and flounces, and spouts, and goes down again. The foul cormorant, stretching his long, lean wings, soars and sinks, piping shrill notes to the restless waves. The haglet and cut-water spring into flight, and dashing over the white crest of the lofty billows, scream their half-counter to the deep bass of the mighty ocean.

"The moral may be illustrated, by a comparison with the natural world. The passions, and the winds, the melancholy and the clouds of each, are alike dark, or tumultuary. What has produced this mighty movement of the last few days in this House? Are the unhomogeneous elements of its majority getting into controversy ? Have the Northern promised to the Southern element, that they would provide a political measure, so promising to the West and the North, but so ruinous to the entire East, that all New-England must, in mass, rise up against it? Has it come to pass, that New-England has sacrificed herself, rather than disappoint the hopes, the vain and never to be realized hopes, of the North and the West? Did the South honestly vote for each, and all those specific provisions of the measure, so ruinous to New-England, and now so odious to themselves? Did they expect, when they had led themselves into temptation, that New-England would deliver them from evil? They did; they are disappointed.

"Hence the wailing, menaces, calumnies, and all the demonstrations of outrageous excitement, exhibited on this floor, by the gentleman from Virginia, (Mr. Randolph,) and from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) and from New-York, (Mr. Cambreling.)

"As it relates to New-England, I will make some reply. As it relates to the two parts of the majority of this House, which carried all the obnoxious provisions of this Bill, I will not hazard myself, within the wind of their controversy.' When cat and cat fly at each other, though the fur and skin may suffer, yet

« السابقةمتابعة »