Wut did God makes us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.

Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o' wut's right and wut aint,
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
But John P.

Robinson he

Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took;
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country,
An' the angel that writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
An' John P.

Robinson he

Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies;
Sez they're nothin' on airth but just fee, faw, fum;
And that all this big talk of our destinies

Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum;

But John P.
Robinson he

Sez it aint no sech thing; an', o' course, so must we.

Parson Wilber sez he never heerd in his life

Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats,

An' marched out in front of a drum an' a fife,

To git some on 'em office, and some on 'em votes;

But John P.

Robinson he

Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee.

Wal, it's a mercy we've gut folks to tell us

The rights an' the wrongs o' the matters, I vow,
God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers,
To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough;
Fer John P.
Robinson he

Sez the world'll go right ef he hollers out Gee!

ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR

WASHINGTON.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man;
Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease
Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;
And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame,
'Tis but my Bay State dialect, our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone.
To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone,
While we look coldly on and see law-shielded ruffians slay
The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind,
The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,
That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest,
While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first;
The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;

Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,
Than be true to Church and State, while we are doubly false to God!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more,
To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core;
Our country claims our fealty: we grant it so, but then,
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done
To the humblest and the weakest 'neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.
God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free
With parallels of latitude, with mountain range or sea.
Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.

Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart,
With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart;

VOL. XXIV.-25

When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore,
The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.

Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh;

If we are blind their exodus, like Israel's of yore,

Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.

'Tis ours to save our brethren; with peace and love to win
Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin;
But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands,
Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.

WEBSTER ON THE COMPROMISES OF THE

CONSTITUTION.

[DANIEL WEBSTER, American statesman and orator, was born January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, N.H.; graduated at Dartmouth in 1801; became a leading lawyer at the then capital of New Hampshire, Portsmouth; was in Congress (1813-1815) as a Federalist; from 1816 to 1823 practiced law in Boston, and was regarded as in the foremost rank of lawyers and orators. The Dartmouth College case was argued in 1818; he was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1820; in December, 1820, delivered his address on the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. In 1822 he was again elected to Congress; from 1828 to 1842 was United States senator. In the House he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In the Senate he delivered his reply to Hayne June 26-27, 1830. His oration on the laying of the corner stone of Bunker Hill monument was delivered June 17, 1825. He was Secretary of State (1841-1843) under Harrison and Tyler, and negotiated the Ashburton Treaty; he resigned in 1843, and in 1845 was returned to the Senate. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. In 1848 he was candidate for the presidency. In 1850 he supported the compromises, including the Fugitive Slave Act, and was appointed Secretary of State by Fillmore; in 1852 was again a candidate for the presidency; and died October 24 of that year.]

MARCH 7, 1850.

MR. PRESIDENT, in the excited times in which we live, there is found to exist a state of crimination and recrimination between the north and the south. There are lists of grievances produced by each; and those grievances, real or supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of the country from the other, exasperate the feelings, and subdue the sense of fraternal connection, and patriotic love, and mutual regard. I shall bestow a little attention, sir, upon these various grievances, produced on the one side and on the other.

I begin with the complaints of the south: I will not answer, farther than I have, the general statements of the honorable senator from South Carolina, that the north has grown upon the south in consequence of the manner of administering this government, in the collecting of its revenues, and so forth. These are disputed topics, and I have no inclination to enter into them. But I will state these complaints, especially one complaint of the south, which has in my opinion just foundation; and that is, that there has been found at the north, among individuals and among legislatures of the north, a disinclination to perform, fully, their constitutional duties, in regard to the return of persons bound to service, who have escaped into the free states.

In that respect, it is my judgment that the south is right, and the north is wrong. Every member of every northern legislature is bound, by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the constitution of the United States; and this article of the constitution, which says to these states, they shall deliver up fugitives from service, is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfills his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I have always thought that the constitution addressed itself to the legislatures of the states themselves, or to the states themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other states shall be delivered up, and I confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the states themselves. When it is said that a person escaping into another state, and becoming therefore within the jurisdiction of that state, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the passage is that the state itself, in obedience to the constitution, shall cause him to be delivered up. That is my judgment. I have always entertained that opinion, and I entertain it now. But when the subject, some years ago, was before the supreme court of the United States, the majority of the judges held that the power to cause fugitives from service to be delivered up was a power to be exercised under the authority of this government. I do not know, on the whole, that it may not have been a fortunate decision. My habit is to respect the result of judicial deliberations, and the solemnity of judicial decisions.

But, as it now stands, the business of seeing that these fugitives are delivered up resides in the power of congress and the

national judicature, and my friend at the head of the judiciary committee has a bill on the subject, now before the senate, with some amendments to it, which I propose to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest extent. And I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men, of all conscientious men, in the north, of all men who are not carried away by any fanatical idea, or by any false idea whatever, to their constitutional obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the north, as a question of morals and a question of conscience, What right have they, in all their legislative capacity, or any other, to endeavor to get round this constitution, to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the constitution, to the persons whose slaves escape from them? None at allnone at all. Neither in the forum of conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they justified, in my opinion. Of course, it is a matter for their consideration. They probably, in the turmoil of the times, have not stopped to consider of this; they have followed what seemed to be the current of thought and of motives as the occasion arose, and neglected to investigate fully the real question, and to consider their constitutional obligations, as I am sure, if they did consider, they would fulfill them with alacrity. Therefore, I repeat, sir, that here is a ground of complaint against the north, well founded, which ought to be removed-which it is now in the power of the different departments of this government to removewhich calls for the enactment of proper laws, authorizing the judicature of this government, in the several states, to do all that is necessary for the recapture of fugitive slaves, and for the restoration of them to those who claim them. Wherever I go, and whenever I speak on the subject—and when I speak here, I desire to speak to the whole north-I say that the south has been injured in this respect, and has a right to complain; and the north has been too careless of what I think the constitution peremptorily and emphatically enjoins upon it as a duty.

Complaint has been made against certain resolutions that emanate from legislatures at the north, and are sent here to us, not only on the subject of slavery in this district, but sometimes recommending congress to consider the means of abolishing slavery in the states. I should be sorry to be called upon to present any resolutions here which could not be referable to any committee or any power in congress, and, there