ward has been attended by circumstances in some degree novel in the history of the human mind. . . .

Population advances westward with a rapidity which numbers may describe, indeed, but cannot represent, with any vivacity, to the mind. The wilderness, which one year is impassable, is traversed, the next, by the caravans of industrious emigrants, carrying with them the language, the institutions, and the arts of civilized life. It is not the irruption of wild barbarians, sent to visit the wrath of God on a degenerate empire; it is not the inroad of disciplined banditti, put in motion by reason of state or court intrigue. It is the human family, led out by Providence to possess its broad patrimony. The states and nations which are springing up in the valley of the Missouri, are bound to us by the dearest ties of a common language, a common government, and a common descent. Before New England can look with coldness on their rising myriads, she must forget that some of the best of her own blood is beating in their veins; that her hardy children, with their axes on their shoulders, have been among the pioneers, in this march of humanity; that, young as she is, she has become the mother of populous states. What generous mind would sacrifice to a selfish preservation of local preponderance the delight of beholding civilized nations rising up in the desert;

and the language, the manners, the principles in which he has been reared, carried, with his household gods, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains? Who can forget, that this extension of our territorial limits is the extension of the empire of all we hold dear; of our laws, of our character, of the memory of our ancestors, of the great achievements in our history? Whithersoever the sons of the thirteen states shall wander, to southern or western climes, they will send back their hearts to the rocky shores, the battlefields, the infant settlements of the Atlantic coast. These are placed beyond the reach of vicissitude. They have become already matter of history, of poetry, of eloquence.

Divisions may spring up, ill blood may burn, parties be formed, and interests may seem to clash; but the great bonds of the nation are linked to what is past. The deeds of the great men, to whom this country owes its origin and growth, are a patrimony, I know, of which its children will never deprive themselves. As long as the Mississippi and the Missouri shall flow, those men, and those deeds, will be remembered on their banks. The sceptre of government may go where it will; but that of patriotic feeling can never depart from Judah. In all that mighty region which is drained by the Missouri and its tributary streams, the valley coëxtensive, in this country, with the temperate zone,—

will there be, as long as the name of America shall last, a father that will not take his children on his knee, and recount to them the events of the twenty-second of December, the nineteenth of April, the seventeenth of June, and the fourth of July?. . .

Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches (Boston 1860), I. 36-49 passim.

II. Restrictions in Missouri (1820) By REPRESENTATIVE JOHN SErgeant

A Pennsylvanian, member of Congress and appointed commissioner to the Panama Congress.

It is time to come to a conclusion; I fear have already trespassed too long. In the effort I have made to submit to the committee my views of this question, it has been impossible to escape entirely the influence of the sensation that pervades this House. Yet I have no such apprehensions as have been expressed. The question is indeed an important one; but its im portance is derived altogether from its connec tion with the extension, indefinitely, of negrở slavery, over a land which I trust Providence has destined for the labor and the support of freemen. I have no fear that this question, much as it has agitated the country, is to produce any

fatal division, or even to generate a new organization of parties. It is not a question upon which we ought to indulge unreasonable apprehensions, or yield to the counsels of fear. It concerns ages to come and millions to be born. It is, as it were, a question of a new political creation, and it is for us, under Heaven, to say what shall be its condition. If we impose the restriction, it will, I hope, be finally imposed. But, if hereafter it should be found right to remove it, and the State consent, we can remove it. Admit the State, without the restriction, the power is gone for ever, and with it are for ever gone all the efforts that have been made by the non-slaveholding States, to repress and limit the sphere of slavery, and enlarge and extend the blessings of freedom. With it, perhaps, is gone for ever the power of preventing the traffic in slaves, that inhuman and detestable traffic, so long a disgrace to Christendom. In future, and no very distant times, convenience, and profit, and necessity, may be found as available pleas as they formerly were, and for the luxury of slaves, we shall again involve ourselves in the sin of the trade. We must not presume too much upon the strength of our resolutions. Let every man, who has been accustomed to the indulgence, ask himself if it is not a luxury—a tempting luxury, which solicits him strongly and at every moment. The prompt

obedience, the ready attention, the submissive and humble, but eager effort to anticipate command-how flattering to our pride, how soothing to our indolence! To the members from the south I appeal, to know whether they will suffer any temporary inconvenience, or any speculative advantage to expose us to the danger. To those of the north, no appeal can be necessary. To both, I can most sincerely say, that as I know my own views on this subject to be free from any unworthy motive, so will I believe that they likewise have no object but the common good of our common country; and that nothing would have given me more heartfelt satisfaction, than that the present proposition should have originated in the same quarter to which we are said to be indebted for the ordinance of 1787. Then, indeed, would Virginia have appeared in even more than her wonted splendor, and spreading out the scroll of her services, would have beheld none of them with greater pleasure, than that series which began, by pleading the cause of humanity in remonstrances against the slave. trade, while she was yet a colony, and, embracing her own act of abolition, and the ordinance of 1787, terminated in the restriction of Missouri. Consider, what a foundation our predecessors have laid! And behold, with the blessing of Providence, how the work has prospered! What is there, in ancient or in modern times,