THE PRESENT AGE.

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XL-THE PRESENT AGE.

W. E. CHANNING.

THE Present Age. In these brief words what a world of thought is comprehended! what infinite movements! what joys and sorrows! what hope and despair! what faith and doubt! what silent grief and loud lament! what fierce conflicts and subtle schemes of policy! what private and public revolutions! In the period through which many of us have passed, what thrones have been shaken! what hearts have bled what millions have been butchered by their fellowcreatures! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted! and at the same time what magnificent enterprises have been achieved what new provinces won to science and art! what rights and liberties secured to nations! It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amidst its events, the American Revolution, the first distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, and the French Revolution, that volcanic force which shook the earth to its centre, are never to pass from men's minds. Over this age the night will, indeed, gather more and more as time 1olls away; but in that night two forms will appear, Washington and Napoleon, the one a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene, and undecaying star. Another American name will live in history, your Franklin; and the kite which brought lightning from heaven, will be seen sailing in the clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt may be known only by its ruins. There is, however, something greater in the age than its greatest men; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive? Perhaps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken in our day which we have not deigned to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the church, and the

world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the vast movements in our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its sentence.

XIL-STATE VETO POWER.

JOHN C. CALHOUN.

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I AM not surprised that, with the idea of a perfect government which the Senator from Massachusetts has formedgovernment of an absolute majority, unchecked and unrestrained, operating through a representative body—that he is so much shocked with what he is pleased to call the absurdity of State veto. But let me tell him, that his scheme of a perfect government, beautiful as he conceives it to be, though often tried, has invariably failed, and has always ran, whenever tried, through the same uniform process of faction, corruption, anarchy, and despotism He considers the representative principle as the great modern improvement in legislation, and of itself sufficient to secure liberty. I cannot regard it in the light in which he does. Instead of modern, it is of remote origin, and has existed in greater or less perfection, in every free state, from the remotest antiquity. Nor do I consider it as of itself sufficient to secure liberty, though I regard it as one of the indispensable means— -the means of securing the people against the tyranny and oppression of their rulers. To secure liberty, another means is still necessary-the means of securing the different portions of society, against the injustice and oppression of each other, which can only be effected by veto, interposition, or nullification, or by whatever name the restraining or negative power of Government may be called.

The Senator seems to be enamored with his conception of a consolidated government, and avows himself to be prepared,

STATE VETO POWER.

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seeking no lead, to rush in its defence to the front rank, where the blows fall heaviest and thickest. I admire his gallantry and courage; but I will tell him that he will find in the opposite ranks, under the flag of liberty, spirits as gallant as his own; and that experience will teach him, that it is infinitely easier to carry on a war of legislative exaction, by bills and enactments, than to extort by sword and bayonet from the brave and the free.

We e are told, in order to justify the passage of this fatal measure, that it was necessary to present the olive branch with one hand, and the sword with the other. We scorn the alternative. You have no right to present the sword; the Constitution never put the instrument in your hands to be employed against a State; and as to the olive branch, whether we receive it or not, will not depend on your menace, but on our own estimation of what is due to ourselves and the rest of the community, in reference to the difficult subject on which we have taken issue.

XIII-STATE VETO POWER.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

I CANNOT recognize any right in a State to arrest and repeal the legislation of Congress. I could not forget the past, nor shut my eyes to the fact that the present alarming extent and threatening form of a resistance and defiance, have been consequent upon the tolerated practical nullification of the State of Georgia. The gentleman from South Carolina, has assured us that such is the fact; attempts have been vainly made to find a distinction between the two. In principle they are identical. I regret that the gentleman from Georgia, in his endeavor to render his defence of the one, consistent with the condemnation of the other, has deemed it necessary to assail the Supreme Court of the United States-to pronounce the reasoning and argument of one of its most important decisions to be unworthy the lowest county court in any of the States! I can assure the gentleman that the country regards it far otherwise, and that the most vigorous and gifted minds deem it one of the most powerful productions of the wonderful intellect of the revered chief of that august

tribunal. If, in the inscrutable ways of Providence, our institutions are destined to be subverted, and left in ruins by the convulsions of revolution, that decision and other kindred constitutional opinions from the same mind, will remain to after generations, splendid and enduring monuments of intellectual and moral greatness. and, like the broken columns and classic remains of Athens and Palmyra, be the wonder and admiration of successive ages. The time has arrived when the progress of nullification must be arrested, or the hopes of permanent union surrendered. The gentleman assures us that his theory would make this government a beautiful system! Beautiful as would be the proud and polished pillars which surround us, if resolved into their original rude and paltry pebbles; beautiful as the dashed mirror, from whose fragments are reflected twenty-four pigmy portraits, instead of one gigantic and noble original! The triumph of hat doctrine dissolves the union. It must be so regarded by foreign nations; it is almost so even now. . Already have the exultations of the oppressor, and the laments of the philanhropist, been heard beyond the Atlantic They have looked with fear and hope, with wonder and delight, upon the brilliant and beautiful constellation in our western hemisphere, moving in majestic harmony, irradiating the earth with its mild and benignant beams. Shall these stars now be severed and scattered, and rushing from their orbits through the troubled air, singly and feebly sink into clouds of murky blackness, leaving the world in rayless night? Shall the flag of our common country, the ensign of our nation, which has waved in honor upon every sea-the guardian of our common rights-the herald of our common glory-be severed and torn into twenty-four fragments; and our ships hereafter display for their protection but a tattered rag of one of its stripes?

XIV. VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH.

J. CLEMENS.

How stands the account of personal services? It was a Southern man who pointed out the road from bondage to independence; who led you triumphantly through the perils

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of a seven years' war, and sternly refused the diadem with which a grateful soldiery would have crowned him. It was a Southern general and Southern soldiers who breasted the British bayonets at New Orleans, and added one of its brightest chapters to the history of the Republic. Southern blood has watered every plain from the St. Lawrence to the capital of the Aztecs. The memorable fields of Palo Alto, and Resaca de la Palma were won by a Southern general It was before the genius of a Southern leader, that the walls and towers of Monterey crumbled into dust; and two Southern regiments, struggling side by side in a glorious rivalry, snatched from the cannon's mouth the palm of victory. the narrow gorge of Angostura, Southern valor again stemmed the tide of war, and rolled back the murderous charges of the foe. On the sands of Vera Cruz, another great name which the South has given to history and renown, added to a fame already imperishable, and wrung from the reluctant nations of the Old World, plaudits which they could not withhold. At Cerro Gordo, the story of Southern achievements was re-written in blood; and among the rocks and volcanoes of Contreras, the glorious old Palmetto State vindicated her right to the title of chivalrous, and silenced forever the tongues of her detractors. Sir, I mean to indulge in no disparagement of the North. She has furnished gallant men who have done their duty nobly upon the field. I would not, if I could, tear a single laurel from her brow. But I claim

that the record gives to us at least an equality of the common dangers, the common sufferings, and the common triumphs, and I demand an equal participation in the rights they have established.

XV.-TIES THAT BIND THE WEST TO US.

EDWARD EVERETT.

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 her own best blood is beating in their veins; that her hardy children, with