deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceeding on America with the old warning of the church, sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now, quod felix faustumque sit, lay the first stone in the temple of peace; and I move you,

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and containing two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of parliament.

ANSON BURLINGAME

MASSACHUSETTS AND SUMNER

[Anson Burlingame, an American diplomatist, distinguished for the cultivated tone of his oratory, was born in New York State in 1822. He was graduated at Harvard and began the practice of law in Boston, and for six years represented a Massachusetts district in Congress. He was challenged to a duel by Preston S. Brooks, the assailant of Charles Sumner, and accepted, but the meeting never took place. President Lincoln sent him on a diplomatic mission to China, where he gained such an ascendency over the native mind that he was made China's ambassador to the world's leading powers and negotiated treaties for her with them. He died in Russia during his Chinese mission in 1870. The following speech was occasioned by Brooks's assault upon Sumner, and was made in the House of Representatives in 1856.]

MR.

R. CHAIRMAN: The House will bear witness that I have not pressed myself upon its deliberations. I never before asked its indulgence. I have assailed no man; nor have I sought to bring reproach upon any man's state. But, while such has been my course, as well as the course of my colleagues from Massachusetts, upon this floor, certain members have seen fit to assail the state which we represent, not only with words, but with blows.

In remembrance of these things, and seizing the first opportunity which has presented itself for a long time, I stand here to-day to say a word for old Massachusetts-not that she needs it; no, sir; for in all that constitutes true greatness in all that gives abiding strength-in great qualities of head and heart-in moral power-in material prosperity-in intellectual resources and physical ability-by the general judgment of mankind, according to her population, she is the first state.

There does not live the man anywhere who knows anything to whom praise of Massachusetts would not be need

less. She is as far beyond that as she is beyond censure. Members here may sneer at her; they may praise her past at the expense of her present; but I say, with a full conviction of its truth, that Massachusetts, in her present performances, is even greater than in her past recollections. And when I have said this, what more can I say?

Sir, although I am here as her youngest and humblest member, yet, as her representative, I feel that I am the peer of any man upon this floor. Occupying that high standpoint with modesty, but with firmness, I cast down her glove to the whole band of her assailants.

She has been assailed in the House and out of the House, at the other end of the Capitol and at the other end of the avenue. There have been brought against her general charges and specific charges. I am sorry to find at the head of the list of her assailants the President of the United States, who not only assails Massachusetts, but the whole North. He defends one section of the Union at the expense of the other. He declares that one section has ever been mindful of its constitutional obligations and that the other has not. He declares that if one section of our country were a foreign country the other would have just cause of war against it.

And to sustain these remarkable declarations he goes into an elaborate perversion of history, such as that Virginia ceded her lands against the interests of the South for the benefit of the North; when the truth is, she ceded her lands, as New York and other States did, for the benefit of the whole country. She gave her lands to freedom, because she thought freedom was better than slavery; because it was the policy of the times, and events have vindicated that policy.

It is a perversion of history when he says that the territory of the country has been acquired more for the benefit of the North than for the South; he says that substantially. Sir, out of the territory thus acquired five slave states, with a pledge for four more, and two free states have come into the Union; and one of these, as we all know, fought its way through a compromise degrading to the North.

The North does not object to the acquisition of territory when it is desired, but she desires that it shall be free. If

such a complexion had been given to it, how different would have been the fortunes of the republic to-day! This may be ascertained by comparing the progress of Ohio with that of any slave state in the Mississippi Valley. It will appear more clearly by comparing the free with the slave regions. I have not time to do more than to present a general picture.

Freedom and slavery started together in the great race on this continent. In the very year the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, slaves landed in Virginia. Freedom has gone on, trampling down barbarism and planting states-building the symbols of its faith by every lake and every river, until now the sons of the Pilgrims stand by the shores of the Pacific. Slavery has also made its way toward the setting sun. It has reached the Rio Grande on the south; and the groans of its victims and the clank of its chains may be heard as it slowly ascends the western tributaries of the Mississippi River.

Freedom has left the land bespangled with free schools, and filled the whole heavens with the shining towers of religion and civilization. Slavery has left desolation, ignorance, and death in its path. When we look at these things; when we see what the country would have been had freedom been given to the territories; when we think what it would have been but for this blight in the bosom of the country; that the whole South-that fair land God has blessed so much-would have been covered with cities, and villages, and railroads, and that in the country, in the place of twenty-five millions of people, thirty-five millions would have hailed the rising morn, exulting in republican liberty; when we think of these things, how must every honest man -how must every man with brains in his head or heart in his bosom-regret that the policy of old Virginia in her better days did not become the animating policy of this expanding republic!

It is a perversion of history, I say, when the President intimates that the adoption of the Constitution abrogated the ordinance of 1787. It was recognized by the first Congress which assembled under the Constitution; and it has been sanctioned by nearly every President from Washington down.

It is a perversion of history when the President intimates that the Missouri Compromise was made against the interests of the South and for the benefit of the North. The truth-the unmistakable truth-is that it was forced by the South on the North. It received the almost united vote of the South. It was claimed as a victory of the South.

The men who voted for it were sustained in the South; and those who voted for it in the North passed into oblivion; and though some of them are physically alive, to-day they are as politically dead as are the President and his immediate advisers.

Not only has the President perverted history, but he has turned sectionalist. He has become the champion of sectionalism. He makes the extraordinary declaration that if a state is refused admission into the Union because her constitution embraced slavery as an institution, then one section of the country would of necessity be compelled to dissolve its connection with the people of the other section! What does he mean? Does he mean to say that there are traitors in the South? Does he mean to say if they were voted down that then they ought not to submit? If he does, and if they mean to back him in the declaration, then I say the quicker we try the strength of this great government the better. Not only has he said that, but members have said on this floor again and again that if the Fugitive Slave Law, which has nothing sacred about itwhich I deem unconstitutional-which South Carolina deems unconstitutional-if that law be repealed that this Union will then cease to exist.

I say that it is not for the President and members on this floor to determine the life of this Union; this Union rests in the hearts of the American people and cannot be eradicated thence. Whenever any person shall lift his hand to smite down this Union the people will subjugate him to liberty and the Constitution. I do not wish to dwell on the President and what he has said. Notwithstanding all this perversion of history-notwithstanding his violated pledges and notwithstanding his warlike exploits at Greytown and Lawrence-his servility has been repaid with

scorn.

I am glad of it. The South was right. When a man is