Sir, the Secretary has waylaid, entrapt, exiled, and sent this man to plough the four acres, at a distance of four thousand miles from his own patrimonial fields and trees. The great object of Mr. Van Buren has been to get him out of his way to send him abroad. As a Minister, he knew he could do nothing-he expected-he intended he should do nothing-deserve nothing-receive nothing; but the ridicule of all other nations, the pity of his own, and the contempt of the Secretary himself and his partisans. This heartless politician has, to render this tremendous adversary powerless at home, lured him from his independence, the boast and glory of his manhood, to an old age of foreign surveillance: to come home soiled and spattered to the very eyes in treasury dirt; to shrink into retirement and insignificance; and be like Piso, returned from the inglorious administration of his Macedonian province. Shall we, Sir, in aid of these schemes of the Secretary, and to put him in a condition of quiet machination against the laws, the Constitution, and the great interests of this nation, appropriate this money, and thereby legalize and sustain this measure? I trust in God, we shall not. Pay the man, if you please for going out, for coming home-send out a ship of war for him; it will add, perhaps, less than thirty thousand dollars to the expenditure. Let him have this nine thousand dollars outfit-the President, it has been said, advanced it to him from his private purse-restore it to him; do not suffer ourselves to be in debt to the Chief Magistrate of the nation. It is all a bubble, a mere child's whistle, and people will and must pay dearly for this toy of their Secretary-but let us be rid of it, and this "State Mission," of its memory; if possible, of its deep and mortifying disgrace. If this course be taken, our relations with Russia will be redeemed, restored, and placed upon a safe and honorable footing. If no one else do it, I will move that we go into Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union; for the sole purpose of moving this appropriation of nine thousand dollars for an outfit, and nine thousand dollars for the first year's salary, to enable the President to send out to Russia an efficient Mission, and one in all respects different from this of the Secretary. For never, Sir, since the revolution, has there been a time, when the interests of the United States more urgently required a fair, honorable, and dignified representation in the Courts of Europe. SPEECH ON THE REMOVAL OF THE REMAINS OF WASHINGTON. On the 13th of February, 1832, a Resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives, to remove the remains of Washington from Virginia, and to place them in a vault under the centre of the Capitol. Mr. Burges addressed the House on the Resolution in the following SPEECH. MR. SPEAKER:-Permit me to join my voice to that of the many, who have already mingled in this discussion. There is a kind of immortality associated with what may be deemed the perishable part of this mighty theme; and he who speaks of the venerated remains of Washington, must catch something of inspiration; and feel himself elevated to the loftiest purposes of our nature. Twice has this question come before this House, twice without a dissenting voice. Once, soon after the death of the illustrious Father of his Country covered the nation with mourning; and once, when, a few years ago, enquiry was made here, concerning the most appropriate method of carrying into effect the arrangement originally made between the bereaved family and the national government. If that arrangement of piety and patriotism cannot now be consummated with equal unanimity; nothing surely need fall in the way of performing it, under the exercise of our purest and best feelings. In this controversy of patriotism among great States, concerning their respective interests in this question, it may be thought of one, geographically so inconsiderable as Rhode-Island, that silence might more become her Representatives in this House, than any, the most perfect form of speech. Sir, in any arduous passage of arms, in any intricate question of council, Washington himself in his time did not so decide. Nor will one man in this Hall very severely censure my wish to be heard on this occasion; if he call to mind, that he, who in the darkest hour of revolutionary conflict, stood, in the estimation of the nation, and of that illustrious man, next to himself, was a native of that State. There was, there was a time, Sir, when this man was the property of his whole country. If I look back towards the beginning of life, memory is in a moment filled with bright and joyous recollections of that time, when, even in the distant and humble neighborhood of my birth, the lessons of youth, and of childhood, when the very songs of the cradle, were the deeds, the glory, the praises of Washington. Think you, Sir, these teachings have ceased in the land; that these feelings are dead in our country? What then do we hear from the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie). Cannot we, who regard the buried remains of the great Father of our Country, as the earthly remains of no other mortal man are regarded; cannot we, awed and subdued with gratitude, with more than filial piety; cannot we approach the hallowed repository, and roll back the stone from the door of the sepulchre, without the guilt of sacrilege? Cannot his country remove the remains of this, its great Founder; and carry them in solemn procession, accompanied by all the rights of religion, and all the sanctity of its ministers; and finally deposite them in the national cemetery provided for that purpose under the foundation of this building; which thenceforth shall be, not only the temple of freedom, legislation, and justice, but also the august mausoleum of Washington? Who, Sir, who, of all the civilized world, will, while these reverential movements are performing, who will point his finger at these solemnities, and call them a mere pageant ? It is the feeling, Sir, the purpose of the persons, and not the place, or the subject which renders their deed pious or profane. Can we never again without sacrilege, look into the dark house of those so dear to us, until they, bursting the cerements of the tomb, are clothed with immortality? How often does the piety of children, how often the anxious affection of parents, induce them to remove the remains of endeared relatives, to places of more appropriate sepulture? How often do nations remove to their own countries, from distant foreign lands, the bones of their illustrious dead? Was it sacrilege in the Hebrews, when migrating from Egypt, to take from the consecrated catacomb or pyramid, where for centuries they had been deposited, the bones of the illustrious founder of one of their families, and the preserver of them all; and bearing them P* from the populous valley of the Nile, the learned and luxurious realm of the Pharaohs, the scene of all his glory, that they might carry them to a land of rocks and mountains; and render his burial place one of the eternal monuments of their country? So it has continued; and at this day it is, by the dwellers on the hill or on the plain, pointed out to the traveller as the tomb of Joseph the Patriarch. Sir, what man is there, who does not shudder with horror, when he is told, that, not many years ago, a felonious gardner of the late proprietor of Mount Vernon, conceived the sacrilegious project of plundering the family cemetery of those sacred remains; and of transporting to Europe the bones of Washington, and there offering them for sale as relics to the disciples or the fanatics of freedom in the old world. Procuring a false, or purloining the true key, he entered the tomb; but, in the darkness of night, and under the excitement of horror natural to the deed, he bore away those of another, by mistake; and left the hallowed bones of him, whose country would now with filial piety place those sacred remains per. fectly secured in a national mausoleum, under the eye, and in the safe-keeping of all future generations. We are told that the last will and testament of Washington, points out the place and directs the manner of his interment; and if we remove his bones from their present repository, we shall violate that will, and set at defiance principles dear to all civilized nations. Did indeed, then, this great man by his will prohibit this people from doing honor to his remains, by placing them in a mausoleum more suitable to his illustrious life,. and to the gratitude of Americans? He, like all Christian men, directed by his last will, that his body should have Christian burial; and prescribed the manner, and selected the place for that purpose. How shall we expound that will? It has been expounded for us; and that too by one, who was the partner of his perils and triumphs, his labors and councils. One, who shared with him all life could give-and stood by him in the hour of dissolution. Think you, that she would have violated his will: and that too, in the beginning of her bereavement; in the first dark hours of her earthly desolation? "Taught by his great example," she gave up those remains at the call of her country. For to her, as in life to him, the nation was their family; the whole people were their children. What man can believe, that this distinguished woman, alike beloved and honored by a whole people, would have given her consent to the removal, requested by the whole Congress in 1799, if she had believed what the gentleman from South Carolina now tells us, that such removal would have violated his last will, and been a sacrilege committed against the sanctuary of the tomb? Sir, how often has the attention of the nation been called to this great cousummation, so devoutly wished by all the people? How often has the arrangement of 1799 come to the public ear, from that estimable man, the grandson of that illustrious matron? How often have we heard from him not in the language of rebuke, which was merited; no, nor of complaint which he might justly utter; but in the language of deep and heartfelt regret, that the bones of Washington were mouldering into dust, at a distance from that mausoleum, which the gratitude of his country had already prepared for them. It cannot then, Sir, it cannot be said, that the consent of the family will be wanted for us to do, what seems to have been so earnestly desired by them. I cannot, Sir, join in the pious incantation of some gentlemen, who would, in imagination, call up the mighty dead, and put them to inquisition, concerning these obsequies. Who, if he might, would bring back from the blessedness of heaven, to the cares of earth, one purified spirit; or for a moment interrupt the felicities of those realms of reality, by any thing which agitates human feelings, in this region of dust and shadows? Permit me to learn from his life, what his country may, with propriety, do with his remains, after his death. When that immortal soul, now as we trust in beatitude, inhabited and animated his mortal part, where was the place, what was the service to which the voice of his country called him, and he was not there? In the toils of war, in the councils of peace, he was, soul and body devoted to that people, whom he labored through life to build up into one great nation. Should that body think you, Sir, at this time be less at the service of his country, than when alive with the imperishable soul it was Washington, and walked the world, for human welfare? If his whole life doth tell us, that he placed himself at the call of his country, then truly where should all that remains of him, be finally found, but where the same voice would place them? We would not, in the language of the gentleman from South Carolina, raise over him " a pyramid, a monument, like the eternal |