such in virtue of your common descent, but such far more still in virtue as the higher attributes of a congenial and kindred nature. Do not be startled at the idea of common qualities between the American Cavalier and the American Roundhead. A heroic and unconquerable will, differently directed, is the pervasive and master cement in the character of both. Nourished by the same spirit, sharing as twin-sisters in the struggle of the heritage of the same revolution, what is there in any demand of national faith, or of constitutional duty, or of public morals, which should separate them now? What is there in these grounds-the sound and the true grounds of national conduct—that should induce Massachusetts to disavow the rights, to disown the equality, disdain the remonstrance, or scorn the feelings and the honor, of her best, her strongest, and her earliest friend?

Gentlemen, representatives of Massachusetts! What say you? Are you agreed? Your equals before the revolution began-your equals when it did begin― confederated as your equals in 1777-united as such in 1787-coöperating with you as equals in the administration of our common country from the declaration of independence to the present hour, and, so confederated, united and coöperating with you with all the local rights and institutions which are objected to us noware you agreed that what we were, and are, and ought to be, and must be, we shall always continue to be,—your equalsinviolably your equals still? Are you agreed to this? If so, then, in the sight of heaven and man, we shall renew this day a compact, not of peace only-no, no! not only of peace, grateful as that alone would be—but a compact of immortality for our country!

Give us but a part of that devotion which glowed in the heart of the younger Pitt, and of our own elder Adams, who, in the midst of their agonies, forgot not the countries they had lived for, but mingled with the spasms of their dying hour a last and imploring appeal to the parent of all mercies, that he would remember, in eternal blessings, the land of their birth; give us their devotion-give us that of the young enthusiast of Paris, who, listening to Mirabeau in one of his surpassing vindications of human rights, and seeing him fall from his stand, dying, as a physician proclaimed, for the want of blood, rushed to the spot, and as he bent over the expiring man, bared his arm for the lancet, and cried again and again, with impassioned voice me! let me die, so that country may not perish!"

“Here, tâke it—oh! take it from Mirabeau and the liberties of my Give us something only of such

a love of country, and we are safe, forever safe: the troubles which shadow over and oppress us now will pass away like a summer cloud. The fatal element of all our discord will be removed from among us. Let gentlemen be adjured by the weal of this and coming ages, by our own and our children's good, by all that we love or that we look for in the progress and the glories of our land, to leave the entire subject of slavery, with every accountability it may impose, every remedy it may require, every accumulation of difficulty or degree of pressure it may reach -to leave it all to the interest, to the wisdom, and to the conscience, of those upon whom the providence of God and the constitution of their country have cast it. Leave it to them, now and forever, and stop, whilst it is yet possible to stop, the furious and blind headway of that wild and mad philanthropy, which is lighting up for the nation itself the fires of the stake, and which is rushing, stride after stride, to an intestine struggle that may bury us all under a harder, and wickeder, and more incurable slavery, than any it would extinguish !

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It is said, sir, that at some dark hour of our revolutionary contest, when army after army had been lost; when, dispirited, beaten, wretched, the heart of the boldest and faithfulest died within them, and all, for an instant, seemed conquered, except the unconquerable soul of our father-chief, — it is said that at that moment, rising above all the auguries around him, and buoyed up by the inspiration of his immortal work for all the trials it could bring, he aroused anew the sunken spirit of his associates by this confident and daring declaration: Strip me (said he) of the dejected and suffering remnant of my army take from me all that I have left-leave me but a banner, give me but the means to plant it upon the mountains of West Augusta, and I will yet draw around me the men who shall lift up their bleeding country from the dust, and set her free!" Give to me, who am a son and representative here of the same West Augusta, give to me as a banner the propitious measure I have endeavored to support, help me to plant it upon this mountain top of our national power, and the land of Washington, undivided and unbroken, will be our land, and the land of our children's children forever! So help me to do this at this hour, and, generations hence, some future son of the south, standing where I stand, in the midst of our legitimate successors, will bless, and praise, and thank God that he, too, can say of them, as I of you, and of all around me—these, these are my brethren, and OH! THIS, THIS TOO, IS MY COUNTRY!

REPLY TO MR. MCDOWELL.

J. G. PALFREY.

MR. CHAIRMAN,Three days ago, I listened to another strain from the Ancient Dominion, with the delight which such graceful eloquence has the power to give, and certainly not without my share of the emotion which was stirred in every hearer. I trust that it was not a mere transient pleasure, but that I was warmed with something of the patriotic spirit which he so powerfully exhorted us to cultivate. So far as that effect was produced, I shall be only the better qualified to sustain those views of the public well-being and honor of which I have occasionally come forward here as the very humble advocate. Admiring the elevated and generous tone of many of that gentleman's remarks, there were yet some things I could have wished otherwise-independent of his argument on the particular question now in hand, which, of course, did not satisfy me.

The gentlemen thinks that Virginia laid Massachusetts under an obligation of gratitude and affection by her sympathy and aid in the disastrous time of the Boston Port Bill. I think she did, and that the debt is mutual, at least. Does the gentleman suppose that the distresses incurred by Massachusetts, at the period of which he speaks, were solely for objects of her own or that the exertions made by Virginia and others of her sister colonies, — whether regarded as made in her behalf, or for the common cause, for which she was standing the foremost champion, were anything more than mitigations of her woe? When James Otis argued in the old State House against the Writs of Assistance, and "then and there," according to John Adams, "the child Independence was born," for whom was that birth, for Massachusetts or for America? When, from her Faneuil Hall, and the meetings of her village democracies, the gauntlet was thrown down to the tremendous power of England, was Massachusetts alone in the prospect of advantage from that strife, or only most forward in its perils? When the vindictive "Port Bill," to which the gentleman referred, took effect, was it some Virginian city, or was it Boston, the chief mart of the continent, that saw its prosperity made desolation, and the grass springing in its streets? And if Massachusetts did incur a debt for the sympathy and succors which, as the gentleman correctly states, she then received, I think she paid some instalments

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own soil - when she sent nearly one soldier in every three to the armies of the revolution, and when the excess of her payments into the common treasury, for the prosecution of the war, over and above what she drew from it, was greater than that of the aggregate of her twelve sister states.

But, sir, when the gentleman, calling up affecting reminiscences of the past, appealed to us of Massachusetts to be faithful to the obligations of patriotism, I repeat that I trust his language fell profitably as well as pleasantly on my ear. He has reminded us of our stern but constant ancestry. I hope we shall be true to their great mission for Freedom and Right, and all the more true for having listened to his own impressive exhortation. The gentleman remembers the declaration of Hume, that "it was to the Puritans that the people of England owed its liberties." May their race never desert that work, as long as any of it is left to do! Sir, as I come of a morning to my duties here, I am apt to stop before the picture in your rotunda, of the departure from Delft Haven of that vessel, "freighted with the best hopes of the world," and refresh myself by looking in the faces of four ancestors of my own, depicted by the limner in the group on that dismal deck the brave and prudent leader of the company, his head and knee bowed in prayer, — his faithful partner, blending in her mild but care-worn countenance the expression of the wife, the parent, the exile and the saint, maiden and the youth, going out to the wide sea and the wide world, but already trained to masculine endurance and "perfect peace," by the precious faith of Christ. Not more steadfast than those forlorn wanderers were the men, who, in the tapestried chambers of England's great sway, with stout sword on thigh, and a stouter faith in the heart, and the ragged flags of Cressy, and Agincourt, and the Armada, above their heads,

the

young

"Sat, with Bibles open, around the council board,

And answered a king's missive with a stern, 'Thus saith the Lord.'

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Not hardier were they, who, in the iron squadrons of Fairfax and Cromwell, had many a hard trot, on many a hot and dusty day, to get so much as a sight of the backs of those silk and velvet cavaliers, of whom the eloquent gentleman discoursed with so much unction..

Sir, the spirit of that stubborn race, if somewhat softened by the change in manners and the lapse of time, is not yet extinct in their children. The gentleman is welcome, for me, to have very little respect for any who, in his language, have

"made capital" of one kind or another out of human slavery. But I ask him, did the Roundhead ever flinch when battle was to be done for freedom? Sir, I live in the midst of the scenes of his last bloody struggle for that cause. Humble as I am, I am honored to represent the men who till the earliest battle-fields of American Independence. As I sit in my door, of a still summer evening, I hear the bells from Lexington Common. The shaft over the sacred ashes of Bunker Hill rises within three miles of my windows. I leave my home, and in an hour I stand by the ruined abutments of old Concord bridge, and the green graves of the first two British victims in the hecatombs of the revolution. Representing, however feebly, such a people, in lineage and in office- warned by the lessons and the present monuments of such a history is it for me to think of helping to extend the foul curse of slavery over another foot of God's fair earth? No; "here I stand; I can do no otherwise; may God help me." I boast no courage; I fear I might turn out to be no better than a fearful man; but I do trust that every drop of thin blood in these old veins of mine would be freely given to stain the scaffold, or boil and bubble at the stake, before, by any act of my doing, the slavery of my brother man should take another forward step on free American soil!

VALUE OF PUBLIC FAITH.

F. AMES.

To expatiate on the value of public faith may pass with some men for declamation; to such men, I have nothing to say. To others, I will urge- can any circumstances mark upon a people, more turpitude and debasement? Can anything tend more to make men think themselves mean, or degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue and their standard of action? It would not merely demoralize mankind; it tends to break all the ligaments of society, to dissolve that mysterious charm which attracts individuals to the nation, and to inspire in its stead a repulsive sense of shame and disgust.

What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference, because they are greener ? No, sir; this is not the character of the virtue ; — it soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and entwining itself with the