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CXXXVII-SUPPOSED SPEECH OF ADAMS IN REPLY.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

SINK or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning, we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it

is ours. Why then should we defer the declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life, and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston port-bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down into dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. The war then must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies, the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously, through this struggle. Sir, the declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. Read this declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons

fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexing ton and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

I

Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time, when this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die, colonists; die, slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously, and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. But if it be the pleasure of heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country. Whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it, with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off, as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment; independence, now; and INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!

All that I

CXXXVIII-SOCIETY WITHOUT MORALITY.

LYMAN BEECHER.

THE mass is changing. We are becoming another people. Our habits have held us, long after those moral causes which formed them have in a great degree ceased to operate. These habits, at length, are giving way. So many hands have so

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long been employed to pull away foundations, and so few to repair the breaches, that the building totters. So much en. terprise has been displayed in removing obstructions from the current of human depravity, and so little to restore them, that the stream at length is beginning to run. It may be stopped now, but it will soon become deep, and broad, and rapid, and irresistible.

The crisis then has come. By the people of this generation, by ourselves probably, the amazing question is to be decided, whether the inheritance of our fathers shall be preserved, or thrown away-whether our Sabbaths shall be a delight, or a loathing--whether the taverns on that holy day, shall be crowded with drunkards, or the sanctuary of God with humble worshippers-whether riot and profanity shall fill our streets, and poverty our dwellings, and convicts our jails, and violence our land; or whether industry, and temperance, and righteousness, shall be the stability of our times -whether mild laws shall receive the cheerful submission of freemen, or the iron rod of a tyrant compel the trembling homage of slaves. Be not deceived. Human nature in this nation is like human nature everywhere. All actual difference in our favor is adventitious, and the result of our laws, institutions and habits. It is a moral influence which, with the blessing of God, has formed a state of society so eminently desirable. The same influence which has formed it, is indispensable to its preservation. The rocks and hills of New England will remain till the last conflagration; but, let the Sabbath be profaned with impunity, the worship of God be abandoned, the government and religious instruction of children be neglected, the streams of intemperance be permitted to flow, and her glory will depart. The wall of fire will no more surround her, and the munition of rocks will no longer be her defence.

CXXXIX.-EMBASSY TO ROME.

LEWIS C. LEVIN.

SYMPATHY with Pope Pius IX. appears to be the hobbyhorse of political leaders. O'Connell, the Irish reformer, is dead. The curtain has fallen upon the last act of the na

tional farce, and now the Pope, an Italian reformer, steps upon the stage to conclude what O'Connell left unfinished. The hurrah has gone through the country; public meetings have been held; sympathy for the Pope has grown almost into a fashion yet, sir, in no legitimate sense can this embassy to Rome be called a national measure, intended for the public benefit. We have no commerce to protect in the Roman States; we have no seamen whose rights may need even the supervision of a government agent or consul; we have no navy riding in her only harbor; we have no interests that may be exposed to jeopardy for want of an ambassador.

The Papal flag has never been known to wave in an American port. No American vessel has received the visit of a Pope. Dwelling under the shadow of the ruins of antiquity, they have never disturbed us, save by the bulls of Pope Gregory and the intrigues of his Jesuits. What, then, has produced this sudden revolution in the concerns of the two countries? We are told that Pius IX. is a reformer. Indeed In what sense is he a reformer? Has he divested himself of any of his absolute prerogatives? Has he cast off his claims to infallibility? Has he flung aside his triple crown? Has he become a republican? Has he emancipated his people? Has he suppressed the Jesuits? Far from it. Nothing of this has been done. He maintains his own prerogatives as absolute as Gregory XIX., or any other of his illustrious predecessors. In what, then, does the world give him credit for being a reformer? For building up a new and firmer foundation to his own secular and hierarchical power; for permitting a press to be established in Rome, under his own supervision and control; for carrying out measures not to be censured, but certainly giving him no pretensions beyond that of a selfish sagacity, intent on the study of all means calculated to add stability to his spiritual power, and firmness to his temporal throne.

But, it is said, if Rome will not come to America, America must go to Rome! This is the new doctrine of an age of retrogressive progress. If the Pope will not establish a republic for his Italian subjects, we, the American people, must renounce all the ties of our glorious freedom, and endorse the Papal system as the perfection of human wisdom, by sending an amdassador to Rome to congratulate His Holiness" on having made-what? The Roman people

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free? Oh! no; but on having made tyranny amiable; in having sugared the poisoned cake. And for this, the highest crime against freedom, we are to commission an ambassador to Rome! Is there an American heart that does not recoil from the utter degradation of the scheme? Sir, in the name of the American people, I protest against this innovation, which would make us a by-word among the nations.

CXL-CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES.

W. L. DAYTON.

I HAVE Some confidence-an abiding hope, at least—that we have seen the end of this wretched war. I trust that the flag of my country will never again be red with Mexican blood. The gallantry of our troops has carried it through smoke and fire from the coast to the capital-from the waters of the Gulf to the very halls of the Aztec. There, then, let it rest; may not a breath of human passion ever again open one fold on a Mexican battle-field. I know not how recent events in the European world may have affected the minds of other men, but, for myself, I feel that, at this strange juncture in the world's progress, America, the great moving cause and example, should be at rest. In peace there is at this moment to us a peculiar, a moral fitness. If one half that we hear be true, an intense interest must soon attach itself to us and to our institutions. We are soon to become the cynosure of all eyes, "the observed of all observers" among nations. Consider well, I pray you, the spectacle that we now present, as the great model republic, preying upon, grinding to powder a weak, helpless, an almost only sister republic. But, sir, it is not only fit in a moral point of view that we should be at peace, but prudential considerations counsel us to the same course. The atmosphere of the old world is portentous of change; her air is thick and murky; the clouds are lurid; nations, like men, are literally holding their breath in momentary expectation of the burst which may follow. I tell you, sir, that you have not yet seen even the beginning of the end. I tell you that nations and kingdoms which are the growth of ages, do not go out without a struggle, nor in a day. I tell you that large