The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 4, March, 1836

by Various

AN ADDRESS,

ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE FEDERATIVE REPUBLICAN SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT UPON LITERATURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER.

Prepared to be delivered before the Historical and Philosophical Society of Virginia, at their annual meeting in 1836, by THOMAS R. DEW, Professor of History, Metaphysics and Political Law, in the College of William and Mary. Published by request of the Society,¹ March 20, 1836.

¹ "It being understood that Professor Dew has been prevented by delicate health and the inclemency of the season, from attending the present meeting—

"Resolved, That he be requested to furnish the Recording Secretary of this Society with a copy of his intended address, for insertion in the Southern Literary Messenger."

Extract from the minutes. G. A. MYERS, Recording Secretary Of the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society,

I have consented to appear before you this evening with feelings of the deepest solicitude—a solicitude which has been increased by my knowledge of the ability and eloquence of the gentleman who was first chosen by you to perform this task, and by the fact that this is the first time that circumstances have permitted my attendance on your sessions, though early admitted by the kindness of your body to the honor of membership.

The subject upon which I propose to address you is one which I hope will not be considered as inappropriate to the occasion. I shall endeavor to present to your view some of the most important effects which the Federative Republican System of government is calculated to produce on the progress of literature and on the development of individual and national character.

When we cast a glance at the nations of the earth and contemplate their character, and that of the individuals who compose them, we are amazed at the almost endless variety which such a prospect presents to our view. We perceive the most marked differences, not only between the savage and civilized nations, but between the civilized themselves—not only between different races of different physical organization, but between the same races—not only between nations situated at immense distances from each other, but among those enjoying the same climate, and inhabiting the same region. How marked the difference, for example, between the nations of India and those of Europe—how different the citizen who merely vegetates under the still silent crushing despotisms of the East, from that restless, bustling, energetic being who lives under the limited monarchies and republics of the West! And again, what great differences do we find among the latter themselves! What differences do we observe between the French and the English, the Germans and the Spaniards, the Swiss and the Italians! How often does the whole moral nature of man seem to change, by crossing a range of mountains, passing a frontier stream, or even an imaginary line! "The Languedocians and Gascons," says Hume, "are the gayest people in France; but whenever you pass the Pyrenees you are among Spaniards." "Athens and Thebes were but a short day's journey from each other; though the Athenians were as remarkable for ingenuity, politeness and gaiety, as the Thebans for dulness, rusticity, and a phlegmatic temper."

There is no subject more worthy the attention of the philosopher and the historian, than a consideration of the causes which thus influence the moral destiny, and determine the character of nations and individuals. Among the generating causes of national differences, none exert so powerful, so irresistible an influence as Religion and Government; and of these two potent engines in the formation of character, it may be affirmed, that if the former be sometimes, under the operation of peculiar circumstances, more powerful and overwhelming, directing for a season the spirit of the age and overcoming every resistance to its progress, the latter is much more constant and universal in its action, and mainly contributes to the formation of that permanent national character which lasts through ages.

Of all the governments which have ever been established, it may perhaps be affirmed, that ours, if the most complicate in structure, is certainly the most beautiful in theory, correcting by the principle of representation, and a proper system of responsibility, the wild extravagances and the capricious levities of the unbalanced democracies of antiquity. Ours is surely the system, which, if administered in the pure spirit of that patriotism and freedom which erected it, holds out to the philanthropists and the friends of liberty throughout the world, the fairest promise of a successful solution of the great problem of free government. Ours is indeed the great experiment of the eighteenth century—to it the eyes of all, friends and foes, are now directed, and upon its result depends perhaps the cause of liberty throughout the civilized world. In the meantime it well behooves us all to hope for the best, and never to despair of the republic. Let me then proceed to inquire into some of the most marked effects which our peculiar system of government is likely to produce, in the progress of time, upon literature and the development of character.

Some have maintained the opinion that the monarchical form of government is better calculated to foster and encourage every species of literature than the republican, and consequently that the institutions of the United States would prove unfavorable to the growth and progress of literature. This opinion seems to be based upon the supposition that a king and aristocracy are necessary for the support and patronage of a literary class. I will briefly explain my views on this point, and then proceed to the consideration of that peculiar influence which our state or federative system of government will, in all probability, exert over the character and literature of our inhabitants. It is this latter view which I wish mainly to present this evening—it is this view which has been neglected or misunderstood in almost all the speculations which I have seen upon the character and influence of our institutions.

In the first place, it has been affirmed that republics are too economical—too niggardly in their expenditures, to afford that salutary and efficient patronage necessary to the growth of literature. To this I would answer, first, that this argument takes for granted that the literature of a nation advances or recedes in proportion to the pecuniary wages which it earns. Now, although I do not say with Dr. Goldsmith, that the man who draws his pen to take a purse, no more deserves to have it, than the man who draws his pistol for the same purpose, yet I may safely assert, that of the motives which operate on the literary man—the love of fame, the desire to be useful, and the love of money—the former, in the great majority of cases, exerts an infinitely more powerful influence than the latter. And if I shall be able to show, as I hope to do in the sequel, that the republican form of government is the one which is best calculated to stimulate these great passions of our nature and throw into action all the energies of man, then must we acknowledge its superiority, even in a literary point of view.

But even supposing that the progress of literature depends directly upon the amount of pecuniary patronage which it can command, it by no means follows that it will flourish most under a monarchical government. For granting that this kind of government may have the ability to patronise, it is by no means certain that it will always possess the will to do so. Augustus and his Mecænas may lavish to day the imperial treasures upon literature, but Tiberius and Sejanus may starve and proscribe it to-morrow. That which depends upon the will of one man must ever be unsteady and uncertain. It is much easier to predict the conduct of a multitude—of a whole nation—than of one individual. The support then which monarchs can be expected to yield to learning, must necessarily be extremely capricious and fluctuating. It is not however by sudden starts and violent impulses, that a sound, solid, wholesome literature can be created. Ages must conspire to the formation of such a literature. Constantine the Great, seated on the throne of the Eastern Empire, with all the resources of the Roman world at his command, could not awaken the slumbering genius of a degenerate race, nor revive the decaying arts of the ancient empire. The literature of his reign, with all the patronage he could bestow upon it, did but too nearly resemble those gorgeous piles, which his pride and vanity caused to be erected in his own imperial city, composed of the ruins of so many of the splendid monuments of antiquity.

Not only, however, is the support a capricious and uncertain one which a monarchy is calculated to yield to literature, but there are only certain departments of learning, and those by no means the most important, which such a government can ever be expected cordially to foster. Monarchs may patronise the fine arts and light literature—they may encourage the mathematical and physical sciences, but they can rarely feel a deep interest in the promotion of correct and orthodox moral, political and theological knowledge, which is, at the same time, much the most important and most difficult department of literature. The great law of self-preservation prompts us to war on every thing which threatens our interest and happiness. Moral and political philosophy has too often aimed its logic at the throne, and questioned the title of the monarch, ever to be a favorite with rulers. Hence, while even the absolute despot may encourage the arts, light literature and the physical and mathematical sciences, he dares not unbind the fetters of the mind in the region of politics, morals and religion. He can but tremble at that bold spirit of inquiry which may be aroused on those subjects—which dares to advance to the throne itself and loosen even the foundations on which it is erected. Napoleon Bonaparte, in the plenitude of his power, could give the utmost encouragement to all those departments of learning, whose principles could not be arrayed against despotism. In these departments he delighted to behold the genius and talent of the country. In the provinces and in the capital he called to the physical and mathematical chairs of his colleges, his universities and his polytechnic schools, some of the most splendid lecturers of the age; but selfishness forbade him to tolerate a free and manly spirit of inquiry in morals and politics, and he whose armies had deluged Europe with blood, whose name was a terror and whose word was a law unto nations, could not feel secure upon his throne while such men as Cousin were illustrating the nineteenth century by the splendor of their professorial eloquence, before the youth of France, or such writers as De Stael were making their animated appeals to the nation, in behalf of liberty of thought, and freedom of action. It is impossible, without full freedom of thought, and a single eye to truth and usefulness, that the scientific investigator, no matter how great his genius may be, can unravel the difficulties of moral and political philosophy. The very patronage of the throne enthrals his intellect, and his fears or his avarice tempt him to desert the cause of truth and humanity.

"Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to flattery's trebles, He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts like heavenly rebels Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings as the Athenean spoke, with pebbles In 's mouth, lest truth should stammer through his strain."

If we look even to those epochs under monarchical governments, which have been designated by the high sounding title of the golden ages of literature, we shall observe a full exemplification of the remarks which I have made on this subject. Let us take the Augustan age itself. Under the patronage of the first of the Roman Emperors we find, it is true, the arts and light literature rising to a pitch which perhaps they had not reached under the republic. After the death of Brutus the world of letters experienced a revolution almost as great as that of the political world. The literature of the Augustan age is distinguished by that tone and spirit which mark the downfall of liberty, and the consequent thraldom of the mind. The bold and manly voice of eloquence was hushed. The high and lofty spirit of the republic was tamed down to a sickly and disgusting servility. The age of poetry came when that of eloquence and philosophy was past; and Virgil and Horace and Propertius, flattered, courted and enriched by an artful prince and an elegant courtier, could consent to sing the sycophantic praises of the monarch who had signed the proscriptions of the triumvirate, and rivetted a despotism on his country.

But the men who most adorned the various departments of learning during the long reign of Augustus, were born in the last days of the republic. They saw what the glory of the commonwealth had been—they beheld with their own eyes the greatness of their country, and they had inhaled in their youth the breath of freedom. No Roman writer, for example, excels the Lyric Bard in true feeling and sympathy for heroic greatness. We ever behold through the medium of his writings—even the gayest—a deep rooted sorrow locked up in his bosom, for the subversion of the liberties of the commonwealth. "On every occasion we can see the inspiring flame of patriotism and freedom breaking through that mist of levity in which his poetry is involved." "He constrained his inclinations," says Schlegel, "and endeavored to write like a royalist, but in spite of himself he is still manifestly a republican and a Roman."²

² Horace fought under Brutus and Cassius, on the side of the Republic, at the battle of Philippi, and he was after the battle saved from the wreck of the republican army, and treated with great respect and kindness by Augustus and his minister Mecænas.

"In the last years of Augustus," says the same writer, "the younger generation who were born, or at least grew up to manhood, after the commencement of the monarchy, were altogether different. We can already perceive the symptoms of declining taste—in Ovid particularly, who is overrun with an unhealthy superfluity of fancy, and a sentimental effeminacy of expression." Even History itself, in which the Romans so far excelled, yielded to the corrupting influence of the Cæsars. Tacitus concluded the long series of splendid and vigorous writers, and he grew up and was educated under the comparatively happy reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and wrote under the mild government of Nerva. Unnatural pomp and extravagance of expression seem, strange as it may appear, to be the necessary results of social and political degradation. And it is curious indeed to behold among the writers under the first Cæsars, the extraordinary compounds which genius can produce, when impelled on the one hand by the all-powerful and stimulating love of liberty, and vivid glimpses of the real dignity of human nature, while checked and subdued on the other by the fear of arbitrary power. Take Lucan for an example. "In him we find the most outrageously republican feelings making their chosen abode in the breast of a wealthy and luxurious courtier of Nero. It excites surprise and even disgust, to observe how he stoops to flatter that disgusting tyrant, in expressions the meanness of which amounts to a crime, and then in the next page, exalts Cato above the Gods themselves, and speaks of all the enemies of the first Cæsar with an admiration that approaches to idolatry."

Let us now look for an exemplification of the same great truths, to the reign of Louis the fourteenth, a reign which has been celebrated as the zenith of warlike and literary splendor—and here I borrow the language of Macintosh. "Talent seemed robbed of the conscious elevation, of the erect and manly port, which is its noblest associate and its surest indication. The mild purity of Fenelon, the lofty spirit of Bossuet, the masculine mind of Boileau, the sublime fervor of Corneille, were confounded by the contagion of ignominious and indiscriminate servility." Purity, propriety and beauty of style, were indeed carried during this reign to a high pitch of perfection. The literature of this period was "the highest attainment of the imagination." An aristocratic society, such as that which adorned the court of Louis XIV, is particularly favorable to the delicacy and polish of style, the fascinations of wit and gaiety, and to all the decorations of an elegant imagination. No one has ever surpassed Racine, Fenelon, and Bossuet, in purity of style and elegance of language.

The literature of this age, however, as well asserted by Madame de Stael, was not a "philosophic power." "Sometimes indeed, authors were seen, like Achilles, to take up warlike weapons in the midst of frivolous employments, but, in general, books at that time did not treat upon subjects of real importance. Literary men retired to a distance from the active interests of life. An analysis of the principles of government, an examination into religious opinions, a just appreciation of men in power, every thing in short that could lead to any applicable result, was strictly forbidden them." Hence, however perfect the compositions of this age in mere style and ornament, we find them sadly deficient in profundity of reflection and utility of purpose. The human mind during this period had not yet reached its proper elevation, because it was enthralled by arbitrary power. The succeeding, was one of more grandeur of thought, and consequently of a more bold, daring, and profound philosophy. In vain would we look over the annals of the age of Louis XIV, to find a parallel to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Raynal. And what, let me ask, had so soon produced this mighty difference in the philosophy of France? It surely could not be the patronage of that base, profligate, licentious libertine, who during the period of his unfortunate regency, loosened the very foundation of human virtue, polluted the morals of his country, and weakened or destroyed those dearest of ties which bind together in harmony, in happiness and in love, the whole social fabric. It could not surely be the patronage of a monarch who had been reared and educated in such a school as this. No! it was the new spirit which animated the age—the spirit of liberty—the spirit of free inquiry—the spirit of utility. It was this spirit which quickened and aroused the stagnant genius of the nation, and filled the soul with the "aliquid immensum infinitumque," which had in the days of antiquity inspired the eloquence of a Tully and the sublime vehemence of Demosthenes. It was this new spirit, and not the puny patronage of a monarch, that called forth those intellectual giants of their age, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, who have traced out three different periods in the progress of reflection—and if I may borrow the language of De Stael, like the Gods of Olympus, have gone over the ground in three steps. It was this new spirit in fine, which in spite of the influence of the monarch and his nobility, sapped the foundation of the throne and hastened on the awful crisis of revolution in that devoted country.

Thus do we see that it is only the lighter kinds of literature, and the physical and mathematical sciences, which the patronage of a monarch can be expected to foster. In those nobler and more useful branches of knowledge—moral, mental, religious, and political,—the patronage of the throne clips the wings of philosophy and arrests the growth of science and the progress of truth.³

³ In the great Austrian University established at Vienna, the Professor of Statistics is strictly forbidden to present to the view of his class any other Statistics than those of Austria, lest this country should suffer by comparison with others. How limited must be the range of intellect on political subjects under such fatal restrictions as this, imposed by the narrow jealousy of arbitrary power!

So far from this particular species of literature flourishing most under the bounty and patronage of a monarch, we find, in almost every monarchy, the party arrayed against the government, at the same time the most talented and the most philosophical party. The remark is susceptible of still greater generalization. I may, perhaps, with truth assert that in every age and in every nation, the men who have arrayed themselves against the usurpations of government, whether monarchical or republican—the men who have arrayed themselves on the side of liberty, who have led on the forlorn hope against the aggressions of despotism, have been the men who against the patronage of power and wealth, have reared up those systems of philosophy that time cannot destroy—they are the men who have performed those noble achievements which most illustrate their country, and weave for it the chaplet of its glory—these are the men whose eloquence has shaken senates and animated nations. These are the men, who, whatever may be their destiny whilst they live, will ever be remembered and honored by a grateful posterity. Where now are those writings which contend for jure divino rights and patriarchal power?—past and gone! The Filmers are forgotten, the Hobbes are despised—while the writings of Locke will live forever, and the memory of Sidney and Russell and Hampden will be cherished through all ages. What were the Grenvilles and the Norths in more recent times, when compared with Chatham, Burke, Fox and Sheridan, in England, or with the Washingtons, Franklins, Henrys, Jeffersons and Adamses of our own revolutionary crisis. And thus would a review of the history of the world bear me out in the assertion, that in almost every age and country since the annals of history have become authentic, the opposition literature, in moral, political and religious philosophy has been purer, deeper, more vivifying and useful, than that sickly literature which has grown up under the shadow of the throne, though encouraged and stimulated by the smiles of power, and sustained and fostered by the lavish expenditure of exhaustless treasures.

The only additional remark which I shall make upon the general question of the relative influences exerted upon the progress of literature and the development of character, by the monarchical and republican forms of government is, that in the former the aspirants to office and honors look upwards to the throne and the nobility, in the latter they look downwards to the people. This simple difference between the two governments is calculated to produce the most extensive and material consequences. In the first place, the kind of talent requisite for success under the two governments, is very different. Even Mr. Hume himself acknowledges, that, to be successful with the people, it is generally necessary for a man to make himself useful by his industry, capacity, or knowledge; to be prosperous under a monarchy, it is requisite to render himself agreeable by his wit, complaisance, or civility. "A strong genius succeeds best in republics: a refined taste in monarchies. And consequently the sciences are the more natural growth of the one, and the polite arts of the other." We are told, that in France under the old monarchy, men did not expect to reach the elevated offices of government either by hard labor, close study, or real efficiency of character. A bon mot, some peculiar gracefulness, was frequently the occasion of the most rapid promotions; and these frequent examples, we are told, inspired a sort of careless philosophy, a confidence in fortune, and a contempt for studious exertions, which could only end in a sacrifice of utility to mere pleasure and elegance.

The fate of individuals under those circumstances is determined, not by their intrinsic worth or real talents, but by their capacity to please the monarch and his court. Poor Racine, we are told by St. Çimon, was banished forever from the royal sunshine in which he had so long basked, because in a moment of that absence of mind for which he was remarkable, he made an unlucky observation upon the writings of Scarron in presence of the king and Madame de Maintenon, which could never be forgotten or forgiven. We all know that the Raleighs, Leicesters, Essexes, &c. under the energetic reign of Elizabeth, were much more indebted to their personal accomplishments and devoted and adulatory gallantries, for their rapid promotions, than to any real services which they had rendered, or extraordinary talents which they had displayed. And in the time of Queen Anne, it has been said that the scale was turned in favor of passive obedience and nonresistance, by the Duchess of Marlborough's gloves; and the ill humor of the Duchess caused the recall of Marlborough, which alone could have saved the kingdom of France from almost certain conquest at that eventful crisis.

Another consequence which almost necessarily follows from the difference just pointed out between the monarchical and republican forms of government, is, that the stimulus furnished by the former, both to thought and action, is much less universal in its operation than that furnished by the latter. In the republican form of government, the sovereignty of the people is the mainspring—the moving power of the whole political engine. This sovereignty pervades the whole nation, like the very atmosphere we breath—it reaches to the farthest, and binds the most distant together. In a well administered and well balanced republic, it matters not where our lot may be cast, whether in the north or the south, at the centre or on the confines, the action of the political machine is still made to reach us—to stimulate our energies and waken up our ambition. The people under this system become more enlightened and more energetic, because the exercise of sovereignty leads to reflection, and creates a demand for knowledge. Aspirants to office must study to become useful, intelligent and efficient, for by these attributes they will be the better enabled to win that popularity which may ensure the suffrages of those around them, so necessary to their attainment of political elevation—and thus does the republican system operate on all, and call into action the latent talent and energy of the country, no matter where they may exist.

In the monarchy, on the contrary, the moving spring of the whole machinery lies at the centre—the virtual sovereignty of the nation reposes in the capital. The want of political rights and powers sinks the dignity of the people, stagnates the public mind, and torpifies all the energies of man. In such a body politic you may have action and life, and even greatness at the centre, whilst you have the torpor and lethargy of death itself at the extremities. The man who is born at a distance from the capital has no chance for elevation there. If he aspires to political distinction he must make a pilgrimage to the seat of government. He must travel up to court, where alone he can bask in the beams of the royal sunshine. How partial is the operation of such a system as this! How many noble intellects may pass undiscovered and undeveloped under its sway! How many noble achievements may be lost, for the want of a proper opportunity to display them! And all this may happen while the monarch and his court are disposed to foster literature, to encourage talent, and to stimulate into action all the energies of the nation.⁴

⁴ Hence we see at once the error committed by the great author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in the assertion, that the absolute monarchy would be the most desirable form of government in the world, if such men as Nerva, Trajan, and the Antonines could always be upon the throne.

But how debasing does this form of government become, when the monarch, either from policy or inclination, shuns the talent and virtue of the country, addresses himself to the lowest, the most vulgar and most selfish passions of man, and draws around him into the high places of the government men taken from the lowest and most despised functions of life. "Kings," says Burke, "are naturally lovers of low company; they are so elevated above all the rest of mankind that they must look upon all their subjects as on a level." They are apt, unless they be wise men, to hate the talent and virtue of the country, and attach themselves to those vile instruments who will consent to flatter their caprices, pander to their low and grovelling pleasures, and offer up to them the disgusting incense of sycophantic fawning adulation. Every man of talent and virtue is an obstacle in the path of such a monarch as this—he holds up to his view a most hateful mirror. When such monarchs as these are on the throne, the government exercises the most withering influence on the intellect and virtue of the country. Science is dishonored and persecuted because she is virtuous, because she will consent to flatter neither the monarch on his throne nor his sycophantic courtier—she will consent to mingle in no degrading strife, nor does she bring up any reserve to the dishonest minister, either to swell his triumph or to break his fall. When men of rank thus sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a useful and noble object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Whilst Tiberius surrenders himself into the keeping of so vile a being as Sejanus—whilst Nero is fiddling and dancing, and Commodus in the arena with the gladiators—all that is noble and great in the empire must retire into the shade and seek for safety in solitude and obscurity.

When Louis XI dismissed from the court those faithful nobles and distinguished citizens, who had stood by his father and saved the monarch and his throne in the hour of adversity, and filled their places with men taken from the lowest and meanest condition of life, with no other merit than that possessed by the eunuch guard of the Medio-Persian monarch, of adhering to the king, because despised by all the world besides, he conquered, for the time at least, the virtue, the chivalry, the real greatness of France. Well, then, may we say, in the emphatic language of England's most philosophic statesman, "Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity every thing formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state. Woe to that country too, that considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command."

But it may be asked, may not some of the effects which I have just described as flowing from monarchy, be produced under the republican form of government? To this I answer that almost all of them may be expected to be the result of one homogeneous republic, stretching over a great extent of territory, including a numerous population and a great diversity of interest; but, as such a government as this has been wisely provided against in our country at least, by a system of confederated republics, I will now proceed to the main object of my discourse this evening—to point out the peculiar influence which our federative system of government is calculated to produce upon literature and character.

And in the first place, supposing our system to continue as perfect in practice as it undoubtedly is in theory, a mere statistical exposé of its future condition in regard to numbers and wealth at no very distant period, is of itself sufficient to present to our view prospects of the most cheering and animating character. We have a territory extending over three millions of square miles, composed of soils of every variety and every degree of fertility, stretching almost from the tropics to the poles in one direction, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the other. We have spread sparsely over a portion of this immense territorial expanse, a population of fifteen millions, principally descended from that nation in Europe, which is at the same time the most wealthy, the most powerful, the most enterprising, the most free, the most civilized, and perhaps the most moral, purely religious and intellectual nation, among all the great powers of Europe. This population, which has, so far, shown itself worthy of the immortal stock of ancestors from which it is descended, is rapidly advancing in numbers and in wealth. Our censuses have hitherto shown a duplication of our population, in periods of less time than twenty-five years. We will assume, however, this period in our calculation, and we shall find this elastic spring of population, (if we can only bind down the movements of the governments of our system within their prescribed orbits,) of itself, like the magic wand of the enchanter, or the marvellous lamp of Aladdin, capable of achieving all which may confer glory and power and distinction on nations. In a period of seventy-five years, which is but a short time in a nation's history, we shall have a population of one hundred and twenty millions of souls, and yet not so dense as the population of many of the states of Europe. We shall then have an empire, formed by mere internal development, as populous as that of Rome and much more wealthy, speaking all the same language, and living under the same or similar institutions.

Let us then for a moment contemplate the inspiring influence which the mere grandeur of such a theatre is calculated to produce on literature and character. Whether the author write for wealth or for fame, or for usefulness, he will have the most unbounded field open to his exertions. The law which secures the property in his productions throughout such an immense empire, will ensure the most unlimited pecuniary patronage to all that is valuable and great, a patronage beyond what kings and princes can furnish. And the most powerful stimulus will be applied to every noble and generous principle of his nature, by the simple reflection that complete success in his literary efforts will introduce him to the knowledge of millions, all of whom may be edified by his instruction, or made more happy by the enjoyment of that literary repast which he may spread before them.

Do we not read of the mighty influence produced upon mind and body in ancient Greece, by the assemblages at the Olympic games? It was the hope of winning the prizes before these assemblages which called forth energy and awakened genius. It was under the thrilling applauses of these bodies that Herodotus recited his prose, and Pindar his poetry. And what, let me ask, was the great idea which animated every Roman writer? It was the idea of Rome herself—of Rome so wonderful in her ancient manners and laws—so great even in her errors and crimes. It was this idea which was breathed from the lips of her orators and embalmed in her literature—it is this idea which stamps the character of independent dignity and grandeur on the page of her philosophy, her history and her poetry.

But what were the multitudes that could be assembled together in Elis, or the heterogeneous half civilized polyglot people of the Roman Empire, bound together by the strong arm of power and overawed by the presence of the legions, in comparison with the millions that will ere long spring up within the limits of our wide spread territory,—speaking the same language,—formed under similar institutions,—and impelled by the same inspiring spirit of independence?

Another advantage which it is proper to present, as growing out of that condition of our people, which a mere statistical exposé will exhibit, is the security furnished by the magnitude and resources of our country, and by the immense distance of all bodies politic of great power and ambition, from our borders, against foreign invasion, or foreign interference in domestic concerns. I shall not here dwell upon the consequent exemption of our country from those mighty engines of despotism, overgrown navies and armies, and the deleterious influence which these essentially anti-literary establishments exercise over the genius and energy of man. I shall merely briefly advert to some of the effects which this security of individuals and states against foreign aggression is calculated to produce on individual enterprise and state exertion.

Since the governments of the world have become more regular and stable, and the great expense of war has made even victory and conquest ruinous to nations, rulers are beginning to look to the development of the internal resources of their countries, more than to foreign conquest and national spoliations. The great system of internal improvement in all its branches, is without doubt one of the most powerfully efficient means which can be devised to hurry forward the accumulation of wealth, and speed on the progress of civilization. The canal and the rail road, the steam boat and the steam car, the water power and steam power, constitute in fact the great and characteristic powers of the nineteenth century—they are the mighty civilizers of the age in which we live. They bind together in harmony and concord the discordant interests of nations, and like the vascular system of the human frame, they produce a wholesome circulation, and a vivifying and stimulating action throughout the whole body politic.

These great improvements in our own country, with but few exceptions, and those well defined, ought to be executed solely by states and individuals. But neither states nor individuals would execute those necessary works, without security from interruption and invasion, and consequent security in the enjoyment of the profits which they might yield. What wealthy individual in our own state, for example, would erect a costly bridge across one of our rivers, or embark his capital in the construction of a canal or rail road, if foe or friend might blow up his bridge during the next year, or a war might interrupt trade, and perhaps a treaty of peace might cede the canal or rail way to a different state?

Of all the nations in Europe, England is the one which has been most exempt from foreign invasion, and we find in that country that individual enterprise has achieved more in the cause of internal improvement than in any other nation in Europe; and the prosperity and real greatness of England are no doubt due in a great measure to the energy and enterprise of her citizens. In the continental nations we find this constant liability to invasion every where paralyzing the enterprise of both individuals and states. One of the most skilful engineers of France tells us that in passing through some of the frontier provinces of that country, he every where beheld the most mournful evidences of the want of both national and individual enterprise, in miserable roads, in decayed or fallen bridges, in the absence of canals and turnpikes, of manufactures, commerce, and even of agriculture itself, in many almost deserted regions. Paris, the second city in Europe in point of numbers and wealth, and the capital of the nation hitherto most powerful on the continent, has not yet in this age of ardor and enterprise, constructed either a canal or rail road to the ocean, or even to any intermediate point. If our federative system contained within its borders a city thus wealthy and populous, and so well situated, can there be a doubt that it would long ere this have sent its rail roads and canals not only to the ocean, but in all probability to the Rhine and the Danube, to the Rhone, the Garonne, and the Mediterranean.

This spirit of improvement, under the hitherto benign protection of our government, is already abroad in the land. New York and Pennsylvania have already executed works which rival in splendor and grandeur the boasted monuments of Egypt, Rome or China, and far excel them in usefulness and profit. The states of the south and west too are moving on in the same noble career. And our own Virginia, the Old Dominion, has at last awakened from her inglorious repose, and is pushing forward with vigor her great central improvement, destined soon to pass the Blue Ridge and Alleghany ranges of mountains, and thus to realize the fable of antiquity, which represented the sea-gods as driving their herds to pasture on the mountains.

"Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere montes."

One certain effect of our great systems of improvement must be the rearing up of large towns throughout our country. I know full well that great cities are cursed with great vices. The worst specimens of the human character, squalid poverty, gorgeous, thoughtless luxury, misery and anxiety, are all to be found in them. But we find, at the same time, the noblest and most virtuous specimens of our race on the same busy, bustling theatre. Mind is here brought into collision with mind—intellect whets up intellect—the energy of one stimulates the energy of another—and thus we find all the great improvements originate here. It is the cities which constitute the great moving power of society; the country population is much more tardy in its action, and thus becomes the regulator to the machinery. It is the cities which have hurried forward the great revolutions of modern times, "whether for weal or woe." It is the cities which have made the great improvements and inventions in mechanics and the arts. It is the great cities which have pushed every department of literature to the highest pitch of perfection. It is the great cities alone which can build up and sustain hospitals, asylums, dispensaries—which can gather together large and splendid libraries, form literary and philosophical associations, assemble together bands of literati, who stimulate and encourage each other. In fine, it is the large cities alone which can rear up and sustain a mere literary class. When there shall arise in this country, as there surely will, some eight or ten cities of the first magnitude, we shall then find the opprobrium which now attaches to us, of having no national literature, wiped away; and there are no doubt some branches of science which we are destined to carry to a pitch of perfection which can be reached no where else. Where, for example, can the great moral, political, and economical sciences be studied so successfully as here? And this leads me at once to the consideration of the operation of the state or federative system of government, which I regard as the most beautiful feature in our political system, and that which is calculated to produce the most beneficial influence both on the progress of science, and on the development of character.

It has been observed, under all great governments acting over wide spread empires, that both the arts and literature quickly come to a stand, and most generally begin to decline afterwards. In fact, Mr. Hume makes the bold assertion in his Essays, "that when the arts and sciences come to perfection in any state, from that moment they naturally or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in that nation where they formerly flourished." His remark is certainly much more applicable to large monarchical governments than to such a system as ours. In large countries, with great national governments, there will be quickly formed in literature as perfect a despotism as exists in politics. Some few great geniuses will arise, explore certain departments of literature, earn an imperishable reputation, die, and bequeath to posterity in their writings a model ever after to be imitated, and for that very reason never to be excelled. And thus it is that certain standard authors establish their dominion in the world of letters, and impose a binding law on their successors, who, it has been well said, do nothing more than transpose the incidents, new-name the characters, and paraphrase the sentiments of their great prototypes. It is known that under the Roman emperors, even as late as the time of Justinian, Virgil was called the poet, by way of distinction, throughout the western empire, while Homer received the same appellation in the eastern empire. These two poets were of undisputed authority to all their successors in epic poetry.

We are told that in the vast empire of China, speaking but one language, governed by one law, and consequently moulded into one dull homogeneous character, this literary despotism is still more marked. When the authority of a great teacher, like that of Confucius, is once established, the doctrine of passive obedience to such authority is just as certainly enforced upon succeeding literati as the same doctrine towards the monarch is enforced on the subject. Now all this has a tendency to cramp genius, and paralyze literary effort.

The developing genius of the modern world was arrested in the career of invention at least, and the imagination was tamed down by the servile imitation of the ancients immediately after the revival of letters. And perhaps one of the greatest benefits conferred on learning by the reformation, consisted of the new impulse that was suddenly communicated to the human mind—an impulse that at once broke asunder the bonds which the literature of the ancient world had rivetted—set free the mind after directing it into a new career of inquiry and investigation, unshackled even by the Latin language, which had so long robbed the vernacular tongues of Europe of the honors justly due to them from the literati of the age.⁵

⁵ I would not by any means be understood as advancing the opinion that the language and literature of the ancients have been always an impediment to the progress of modern literature. On the contrary, at the revival of letters, the moderns were an almost immeasurable distance in the rear of the ancients. Ancient literature then became a power, by which the moderns were at once elevated to the literary level of antiquity; but when once we had reached that point, all farther exclusive devotion to the learning and the language of antiquity became hurtful to the mind by the trammels which it imposed. The study of the classics will forever be useful and interesting to him who aspires to be a scholar. But it becomes injurious when we make it our exclusive study, and substitute the undefined and loose system of morality—the high sounding and empty philosophy of the ancients, for the purer morals and deeper learning of the moderns.

But not only do great writers in large nations establish their authority over their successors, and thus set bounds to the progress of literature, but they repress the genius of the country by discouraging those first intellectual efforts of young aspirants for fame, which appear insignificant by comparison with established models. Now in literature, as well as in the accumulation of wealth, the proverb is strictly true, that it is the first step which is the most difficult, "c'est le premier pas qui coute." The timid and the modest, (and real genius is always modest,) are frequently deterred from appearing in a particular department of literature, because of the great distance at which their first efforts must fall in the rear of the standard authors who have preceded them. They are overawed and alarmed at the first step which it is necessary to take, and frequently recoil from the task, sinking back into the quiet obscurity of listlessness and mental inactivity—whereas, if a proper encouragement could have been furnished to their incipient labors, it would have cheered and animated them in their literary career, and finally conducted them to proud and exalted rank in the world of letters.

The splendor, profundity, and irresistible fascination of Shakspeare's plays, have perhaps deterred many a genius in England from writing plays. So Corneille and Racine have no doubt produced similar effects in France. Even the great names which I have mentioned, would have been overawed, if in the commencement of their career, they had been obliged to contend with their own more splendid productions. "If Moliere and Corneille," said Hume, "were to bring upon the stage at present their early productions which were formerly so well received, it would discourage the young poets to see the indifference and disdain of the public. The ignorance of the age alone could have given admission to the 'Prince of Tyre;' but it is to that we owe 'The Moor.' Had 'Every Man in his Humor' been rejected, we had never seen 'Volpone.'"

Now there is no system of government which has ever been devised by man, better calculated to remove the withering and blighting influence of great names in literature, and at the same time to insure the full possession of all the great benefits which their labors can confer, than the federal system of republics—a system which, at the same time that it binds the states together in peace and harmony, leaves each one in the possession of a government of its own, with its sovereignty and liberty unimpaired. In such a condition as this, there is a wholesome circulation of literature from one state to another, without establishing, however, any thing like a dictatorship in the republic of letters. A salutary rivalry is generated; and a true and genuine patriotism, I must be allowed to assert, will always lead us to foster and stimulate genius, wherever we may perceive symptoms of its development, throughout the limits of that commonwealth to which we are attached. The soldier in the field may love the marshal, and feel an attachment to the grand army which has been so often led to conquest and glory; but I must confess that I admire more that warm, generous, and sympathetic attachment, which his heart feels for that small division and its officer with which he has been connected—for that little platoon in which his own name has been enrolled, and where his own little share of glory has been won.

The history of antiquity, and the history of the modern world, alike show that small independent contiguous states, speaking the same language, living under similar governments, actuated by similar impulses, and bound together by the ties of cordial sympathy and mutual welfare, are the most favorable for the promotion of literature and science—in fine, for the development of every thing that is great, noble, and useful. On such a theatre, the candidate for literary honor is not overawed by the fame of those who have won trophies in adjoining states. He looks to the commonwealth to which he is attached, for support and applause; and when his name begins to be known abroad, and his fame to spread, his horizon expands with the increasing elevation of his station, until it comprehends the whole system of homogeneous republics. In such a system as this, the literature of each state will be aided and stimulated by that of all the rest—it will draw from all the pure fountains in every quarter of the world, without being manacled and stifled by the absolute authority of any. In such a system as this, there is no jure divino right in science—there is no national prejudice fostered in a national literature; respect, and even veneration, will be paid in such a system to all true learning, wherever it may be found; but there will be no worship, no abject submission to literary dictators. And if such a people may fail to form a regular homogeneous national literature, they will perhaps for that very reason be enabled to carry each art and science, in the end, to a higher pitch of perfection than it could reach if trammelled by the binding laws imposed by an organized national literature.

Among the nations of the earth which have made any progress in civilization, we find from the operation of causes which it would be foreign from my object to explain, that Asia most abounds in great and populous empires. And it is precisely in this quarter of the globe that we find a most irresistible despotism in both government and literature. Europe is divided into smaller states, and in them we find more popular governments, and more profound literature. Of all the portions of Europe, Greece was anciently the most divided; but as long as those little states could preserve their freedom, they were by far the most successful cultivators, in the ancient world, of every art and every science. The literature of the little republics of Italy, during the middle ages, illustrates the same great principles; and the rapid progress of the little states of Germany, since the general pacification of Europe in 1815, in literary and philosophical research of every kind, proves likewise the truth of the remarks made above.

Germany was accused by Madame de Stael of having no national literature: but the German state system of government, though by no means equal to ours, bids fair to carry German literature beyond that of any other nation in Europe. Although the literati of these small states are not trammelled either by their own or foreign literature, yet there is no body of learned men in the world who profit more by all that is really good and great in the learning of their neighbors. Without any narrow prejudices, they go with eagerness in search of truth and beauty wherever they are to be found. Every literature in the world has been cultivated by the Germans. We are told that "Shakspeare and Homer occupy the loftiest station in the poetical Olympus, but there is space in it for all true singers out of every age and clime. Ferdusi, and the primeval mythologists of Hindostan, live in brotherly union with the troubadours and ancient story-tellers of the west. The wayward, mystic gloom of Calderon—the lurid fire of Dante—the auroral light of Tasso—the clear, icy glitter of Racine, all are acknowledged and reverenced."

Of all modern literature, the German has the best, as well as the most translations. In 1827, there were three entire versions of Shakspeare, all admitted to be good, besides many that were partial, or considered inferior. How soon, let me ask, would the literature of Germany wane away, if all her little independent states were moulded into one consolidated empire, with a great central government in the capital?

But the most beneficial influence produced upon literature and character under the federative system of government, springs from the operation of the state governments themselves. We have seen that the monarchical government, in a large state, fails to stimulate learning and elicit great activity of character, because its influence does not pervade the whole body politic—while the centre may be properly acted on, the confines are in a state of inextricable languor. A great consolidated republican government, if such an one could exist, would be little better than a monarchy. The aspirants for the high offices in such a nation, would all look up to the government as the centre for promotion, and not to the people. The talent and ambition of the country would have to make the same weary pilgrimage here as in the monarchies—to travel up to court—to fawn upon and flatter the men whom fortune had thrown into the high places of the government. The stimulus which such a government could afford, must necessarily be of the most partial and capricious character. A system of state governments preserves the sovereignty unimpaired in every portion of the country; it carries the beneficial stimulus, which government itself is capable of applying to literature and character, to every division of the people. Under such governments as these, if properly regulated, and not overawed or corrupted by central power—it matters very little where a man's destiny may place him, whether he may be born on the borders of the Lakes, on the banks of the Mississippi, or even in future times on the distant shores of the Pacific—the sovereignty is with him—the action of the state and federal governments reaches him in his distant home as effectually as if he had been born in the federal metropolis, or on the banks of the Potomac, or the waters of the Chesapeake.

Under such a system as this, there is no one part more favored than the rest; but all are subjected to similar governments, and operated on by similar stimulants. In all other countries the term province is a term of reproach. Niebuhr tells us that in France the best book published in Marseilles or Bordeaux is hardly mentioned. C'est publie dans la province is enough to consign the book at once to oblivion—so complete is the literary dictatorship of Paris over all France. In such a system as ours, we have no provinces; if the governments shall only move in their prescribed orbits, all will be principals, all will be heads—each member of the confederacy will stand on the same summit level with every other. While this condition of things exists, the institutions of one state will not be disparaged or overshadowed by those of another—not even by those of the central department. A great and flourishing university for example, established in one state, will but encourage the establishment of another in an adjoining state. The literary efforts of one will not damp or impede those of another, but will stimulate it to enter on the same career.

Where, in all Europe for example, can be found so large a number of good universities for the same amount of population as in the states of Germany. The number, it is said, has reached thirty-six—nineteen Protestant, and seventeen Catholic; and nearly all of them, particularly the Protestant, are in a flourishing condition. Even as early as 1826 there were twenty-two universities in Germany, not one of which numbered less than two hundred students. And Villers tells us that there is more real knowledge in one single university, as that of Gottingen, Halle, or Jena, than in all the eight universities of San Jago de Compostella, Alcala, Orihuela, &c. of the consolidated monarchy of Spain.⁶

⁶ The literature of Spain has never revived since the consolidation of her government under Charles and Philip. It flourished most, strange as it may appear, when the Spanish peninsula was divided among several independent governments, and when the spirit of independence and individuality was excited to the highest pitch by that spirit of honor, love of adventure, and of individual notoriety, infused into the nations of Europe by the Institution of Chivalry. "The literature of Spain," says Sismondi, (Literature of South Europe) "has, strictly speaking, only one period, that of Chivalry. Its sole riches consist in its ancient honor and frankness of character. The poem of the Cid first presented itself to us among the Spanish works, as the Cid himself among the heroes of Spain; and after him, we find nothing in any degree equalling either the noble simplicity of his real character, or the charm of the brilliant fictions of which he is the subject. Nothing that has since appeared can justly demand our unqualified admiration. In the midst of the most brilliant efforts of Spanish genius, our taste has been continually wounded by extravagance and affectation, or our reason has been offended by an eccentricity often bordering on folly." Spain then furnishes a most convincing illustration of the melancholy influence of great consolidated governments on mind and literature. The poem of the Cid, so highly eulogized by Sismondi, is supposed to have been written about the middle of the twelfth century.

If we look to that period of greatest glory in the history of modern Italy, when her little states with all their bustle and faction were still free—still unawed by the great powers of Europe, we shall behold in her universities a beautiful exemplification of the truth of the same principles. Almost every independent state had its university or its college; and no matter how limited its territory, or small its population, the spirit of the state system—the spirit of liberty itself, breathed into these institutions the breath of life, and made them the nurseries of genius and independence, of science and literature.

How soon was the whole character of Holland changed by the benign operation of the federative system, after she had thrown off the odious yoke of the Spanish monarchy! Soon did the spirit of freedom give rise to five universities in this small but interesting country. "When the city of Leyden, in common with all the lower countries, had fought through the bloodiest and perhaps the noblest struggle for liberty on record, the great and good William of Orange offered her immunities from taxes, that she might recover from her bitter sufferings, and be rewarded for the important services which she had rendered to the sacred cause. Leyden however declined the offer, and asked for nothing but the privilege of erecting a university within her walls, as the best reward for more than human endurance and perseverance." This simple fact, says the writer from whom I have obtained this anecdote, is a precious gem to the student of history; for if the protection of the arts and sciences reflects great honor upon a monarch, though it be for vanity's sake, the fostering care with which communities or republics watch over the cultivation of knowledge, and the other ennobling pursuits of man, sheds a still greater lustre upon themselves.

In our own country, it is true that we have not yet passed into the gristle and bone of literary manhood. But we have already established more colleges and universities than exist perhaps in any other country on the face of the globe. We have already about seventy-six in operation, and some of them even now, whether we consider the munificence of their endowments, or the learning which they can boast of, would do credit to any age or country. If the time shall ever come when our state governments shall be broken down, and the power shall be concentrated in one great national system, then will the era of state universities be past, and a few bloated, corrupt, jure divino establishments will be reared in their stead, more interested in the support of absolute power, and the suppression of truth, than in the cause of liberty and freedom of investigation.⁷

⁷ Perhaps in our country we have multiplied colleges to too great an extent, and consequently have lessened their usefulness by too great a division of the funds destined for their support. The spirit of sectarianism co-operating with the system of state governments, has produced this result. The college and university ought, to some extent, to partake of the nature of a monopoly. There should be some concentration of funds, or you will fail to obtain adequate talents for your professorships. In our country particularly, professors should be paid high, or they cannot be induced to relinquish the more brilliant prospects which the learned professions hold out to them. But the evil of too great a number of colleges and universities, is one which will correct itself in the course of time, by the ultimate failure of those not properly endowed.

But it is said by some that the state system tinges all literature with a political hue—that under this system politics becomes the great, the engrossing study of the mind—that the lighter kinds of literature and the fine arts will be neglected—that the mathematical and physical sciences will be uncultivated—in fine, that the literature of such a people will be purely utilitarian. This objection is perhaps, founded principally upon too exclusive a view of the past literary history of our own country. Up to this time there has, if I may use the phraseology of political economy, been a greater demand for political knowledge in this country than for any other species of literature. The new political condition into which we entered at the revolution—the formation of our state and federal governments—the jarring and grating almost necessarily incident to new political machinery just started into action—severely tested too as ours has been, and is still, by the inharmonious and too often selfish action of heterogeneous interests on each other—the formation of new states, and the rapid development of new interests and unforeseen powers, together with the great sparseness of our population, have all contributed to turn the public mind of this country principally to the field of politics and morals—and surely we have arrived at an eminency on these subjects not surpassed in any other country.

One of the most distinguished writers on the continent of Europe, even before the close of the eighteenth century, says most justly, "the American literature, indeed, is not yet formed, but when their magistrates are called upon to address themselves on any subject to the public opinion, they are eminently gifted with the power of touching all the affections of the heart, by expressing simple truths and pure sentiments; and to do this, is already to be acquainted with the most useful secret of elegant style." The Declaration of American Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the speeches delivered on it in the conventions of the states, particularly in Virginia—the collection of essays known by the name of The Federalist—the resolutions on the Alien and Sedition Laws, and the report thereon in the Virginia Legislature of '98 and '99—with the messages of our Presidents, documents from the Cabinets, speeches of our congressmen,⁸ and political expositions of our distinguished statesmen, form altogether a mass of political learning not to be surpassed in any other country. We are not to wonder then that a German writer of much celebrity, and a defender too of the Holy Alliance, in full view of the nascent literature of our country, should have proclaimed the 4th of July, '76, as the commencement of a new era in the history of the world; nor that that eloquent royalist of France, the Vicompte de Chateaubriand, should assert that the representative republic, which has been first reduced to practice in the United States, is the most splendid discovery of modern times.

⁸ There is no species of talent which republican institutions are better calculated to foster and perfect than that of public speaking. Wherever the sovereignty resides with the people, this talent becomes an engine of real power, and one of the surest means of political advancement to the individual who possesses it. Mr. Dunlop remarks, in his Roman Literature, that Cicero's treatise De Claris Oratoribus, makes mention of scarcely one single orator of any distinction in the Roman Republic, who did not rise to the highest dignities of the state. We may certainly expect then, in the progress of time, if our institutions shall endure, that the great art of oratory will be carried to perhaps greater perfection here than in any other country. Our federal system is particularly favorable to the encouragement of this art. Had we but one great legislature in this country, very few could ever be expected to figure in it, and those would be the more elderly and sober. Under these circumstances, the more ardent eloquence of the youthful aspirant might fail to be developed, in consequence of the want of a proper stimulus. The state governments now supply that stimulus in full force, and furnish the first preparatory theatres for oratorical display. When in addition to all this, we take into consideration the training which our public men receive during the canvass, at the elections, in public meetings, and even at the festive board, we must acknowledge that our system is admirably calculated for the development of the talent for public speaking. Perhaps I would not go beyond the truth in making the assertion, that we have now in this country more and better trained public speakers than are to be found in any other. Judging from our own legislature and congress, I would say, without hesitation, that our public men are generally the most efficient speakers in the world, in comparison with their general ability and the learning which they possess. In the latter, unfortunately, they are too often very deficient.

It is very true that our style of speaking is too diffusive. Our orators too often seem to be speaking against time, and to be utterly incapable of condensation. It has been observed, that it would take three or four of the great speeches of Demosthenes to equal in length a speech which a second rate member of Congress would deliver de Lana Caprina. I am well aware that this style is frequently the result of confused ideas, and an indistinct conception of the subject under discussion. But it arises in part from the nature of our republican institutions. Most of the speeches delivered in Congress are really intended for the constituency of those who deliver them, and not to produce an effect in Washington. They are consequently of an elementary character, long and labored too, to suit the pleasure and the capacity of the people. From this cause, combined with others, it has happened that the division of labor in our deliberative bodies has never been so complete as in the British Parliament. When particular subjects are brought up in that body, particular men are immediately looked to for information, and for the discussion of them. Men who are not supposed to be qualified on them, are coughed down when they interrupt the body with their crude remarks. But in our own country, particular subjects have not been thus appropriated to particular individuals; and when a matter of importance is brought up for discussion, all are anxious to speak on it, and it is not to be wondered at that the clouded intellect of some of the speakers, together with the great courtesy of the body, should sometimes lead on to long-winded and tiresome effusions.

No body in ancient times displayed so much patience and courtesy towards its speakers as the Senate of Rome, and we are told that the speeches delivered before the Roman Senate were much longer than those delivered before the Comitia.—There is no body in modern times which displays more impatience than the French Chambers, and accordingly you find generally that the speeches delivered before them are very short. But whatever may be the cause of this tendency to prolixity in many of our speakers, we may console ourselves with the reflection that it is not the fault of all—that there are some now in the United States who can compare with any in the world—that the eloquence of our country is decidedly advancing, and will no doubt shed a much brighter lustre over our future history, if we can only preserve our federal system in all its original purity and perfection.

May we not then, judging even from the past, form the most brilliant conceptions of the future? When our wide spread territory shall be filled up with a denser population—when larger cities shall be erected within our borders, the necessary nurseries of a literary class—when physical and mental labor shall be more subdivided, then will the intellectual level of our country begin to rise; the increasing competition in every department of industry will call for greater labor, greater energy, and more learning on the part of the successful candidates for distinction. And then may we expect that every branch of literature will be cultivated, and every art be practiced by the matured and invigorated genius of the country.

But although in the progress of time we may expect that literature in all its forms and varieties will be successfully cultivated here, yet we must still acknowledge that the character of our political system will give a most decided bias towards moral and political science. Under a system of republics like ours, where the sovereignty resides de jure and de facto in the people, the business of politics is the business of every man. Men in power, in every age and country, are disposed to grasp at more than has been confided to them; they have always developed wolfish propensities. To guard against these dangerous propensities in a republic, it is necessary that the people in whom the sovereignty resides, should always be on the watch-tower; they should never be caught slumbering at their posts; they should take the alarm not only against the palpable and open usurpations of power, but against those gradual, secret, imperceptible changes, which silently dig away the very foundations of our constitution, and create no alarm until they are ready to shake down the whole fabric of our liberties. Under these circumstances, it is the business of every man—it is more, it is the duty of every man—to think, to reflect, to instruct himself, that he may be prepared to perform that part at least which must necessarily devolve on each freeman in the great political drama of our country. He must recollect that the great experiment of a free government depends upon the intelligence and the virtue of the people. It is this knowledge and this virtue which constitute at once their power and their safety. It is in the reliance on this power, resulting from the intelligence and virtue of the people alone, that the honest patriot may well exclaim in the glowing language of Sheridan on a different subject, "I will give to the minister a venal house of peers—I will give him a corrupt and servile house of commons—I will give him the full swing of the patronage of his office—I will give him all the power that place can confer, to overawe resistance and purchase up submission; and yet armed, with this mighty power of the people, I will shake down from its height corruption, and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuse it was meant to shelter."

Surely then it can be no disadvantage to a country to direct the virtue and talents of its citizens principally to that science whose principles, when well understood and practiced on, will secure the liberty and happiness of the people, but when mistaken by ignorance, or perverted by corruption, will subvert the one, and dissipate the other. Look to the past history of the world, from the days of the Patriarchs to the days of our Presidents, and we are at a loss, after the review, to determine whether the world has been injured more by the unwise and unskilful efforts of statesmen and philanthropists to benefit, or by the nefarious attempts of wicked men and tyrants to injure it. We shall find from this review, that where a Hampden, a Sidney, and a Russell have been crushed by the tyrannous exercise of power, and been wept over by posterity after they had fallen, thousands have been reduced to misery, or sent untimely out of the world, unpitied and unmourned, by the stupid legislation of ignorant statesmen. Of such bodies of functionaries, we may well exclaim, in the language of England's bard,

"How much more happy were good Æsop's frogs Than we?—for ours are animated logs, With ponderous malice swaying to and fro, And crushing nations with a stupid blow."

The statistics of the densely populated countries of Europe and Asia inform us, that there are large masses of population in those countries constantly vacillating, if I may use the expression, between life and death; a feather may decide the preponderance of the scales, in favor of one or the other. In view of such a pregnant fact as this, how awfully responsible becomes the duty of the legislator! Suppose, whilst he is endeavoring to organize the labor and capital of the country, he should unfortunately tamper with the sources of production, and, if I may use the beautiful simile of Fenelon, like him who endeavors to enlarge the native springs of the rock, should suddenly find that his labors had but served to dry them up,—what calamities would not such legislative blunders at once inflict upon that lowest and most destitute class, which is already holding on upon life, with so frail a tenure! How many would be hastened prematurely out of existence! And these are the melancholy every-day consequences, too often misunderstood or unnoticed, of ignorant legislation. How vastly different is the benign influence of that wise legislator, whose laws, in the language of Bacon, "are deep, not vulgar; not made on the spur of a particular occasion for the present, but out of Providence for the future, to make the estate of the people still more and more happy!"

But not only should political science be a prominent study in every republic, in consequence of its immense importance and universal application, but it demands the most assiduous cultivation, because of the intrinsic difficulties which belong to it. There is no science in which we are more likely to ascribe effects to wrong causes than in politics—there is none which demands a more constant exercise of reason and observation, and in which first impressions are so likely to be false. The moral and political sciences, particularly the latter, are much more difficult than the physical and mathematical. There is scarcely any intellect, no matter how common, which may not, by severe study and close application, be brought at last to master mere physical and mathematical science. Eminence here is rather a proof of labor than of genius.⁹

⁹ A very able reviewer in Blackwood, of Allison's History of the French Revolution, says of Napoleon, in attempting to disprove his precocious greatness, "even his faculty for mathematics, which has been frequently adduced as one of the most sufficient proofs of his future fame as a soldier, fails; perhaps no faculty of the human mind is less successful in promoting those enlarged views, or that rapid and vigorous comprehension of the necessities of the moment, which form the essentials of the great statesman or soldier. The mathematician is generally the last man equal to the sudden difficulties of situation, or even to the ordinary problems of human life. Skill in the science of equations might draw up a clear system of tactics on paper. But it must be a mental operation, not merely of a more active, but of a totally different kind, which constructed the recovery of the battle at Marengo, or led the march to Ulm."

But in matters of morals and politics how many must turn their attention to them, and how few become eminent! Suppose that the exalted talents which have been turned into a political career in this country, had been employed with the same assiduity in physics or mathematics—to what perfection might they not have attained in those sciences? If the genius and study which have been expended upon one great subject in political economy, the Banks for example, could have been directed with equal ardor to mathematics and physics, with what complete success would they have been crowned? And yet this whole subject of Banking is far, very far from being thoroughly comprehended by the most expanded intellects of the age. Thus do we find the moral and political departments of literature the most useful,¹⁰ and at the same time much the most difficult to cultivate with success. They require too a concurrence of every other species of knowledge to their perfection, and hence the literature of that country may always be expected to be most perfect and most useful, in which these branches are made the centre, the great nucleus around which the others are formed.¹¹

¹⁰ Dr. Johnson in his Life of Milton, has given us his opinion on these subjects, and as it is perfectly coincident with my own, I cannot forbear to add it in a note. "The truth is," says the Doctor, "that the knowledge of external nature and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great nor frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation—whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places. We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physical learning is of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation."

¹¹ Although our political institutions have the effect of directing the matured minds of the country into the field of politics and morals, yet we are not to suppose, on that account, that the mathematical and physical sciences will be neglected here. In almost all our colleges, particular attention is paid to these latter branches. In fact, so far as I have been enabled to examine into the condition of our colleges and universities, I would say the moral and political sciences are almost always too much neglected. It is easy generally to fill the mathematical and physical departments with able professors, because those who are well qualified to fill those departments, can find no other employments so lucrative and honorable. But those who would make eminent moral and political lecturers, would be generally well qualified, with but little additional study, to enter into the learned professions, or into the still more enticing field of politics, with the most unlimited prospects before them. Hence, whilst in many of our colleges the physical and mathematical chairs are most ably filled, you find the moral and political professors but second rate men. Now talent and real comprehension of mind are particularly required on the subjects of morals and politics. In the mathematics and physics, the merest dunce, if he teaches at all, must teach correctly. He may not give the most concise, or the most beautiful, or the most recent demonstration; but if he gives any demonstration at all, his reasoning is irrefutable, and his conclusions undeniably true. How vastly different are our speculations in politics and morals! What fatal principles may ignorance or dishonesty inculcate here! In our colleges, then the fixed sciences do now, and are likely in future to receive most attention; and consequently, we need not fear that they will be neglected. On the contrary, the danger seems to be, that they may be studied too exclusively.

Again, the wide extent of our country, the variety of our soils, our immense mineralogical resources, our mountains and rivers, our diversified geological phenomena, our canals, our rail roads, our immense improvements of all descriptions, open a wide and unlimited range for the research and practical skill of the physical and mathematical student, which will always stimulate the talent of the country sufficiently in this direction. Our past history too, confirms my remarks; and the great names in mathematics and physics, and the great and useful inventions in the arts, which have already shed a halo of glory around our infant institutions, point us to that brilliant prospect in the vista of the future, when our mathematical and natural philosophers, if not the very first, will certainly rank among the greatest of the world.

But again, the state system of government, in all its details, awakens the genius and elicits the energies of the citizens, by the high inducement to exertion held out to all,—from the stimulating hope of influencing the destinies of others, and becoming useful to mankind and an ornament to our country. Under the benign operation of the federative system, the hope of rising to some distinction in the commonwealth, is breathed into us all. From the highest to the lowest, we stand ready and anxious to step forth into the service of our country. This universal desire to be useful—this constant hope of rising to distinction—this longing after immortality, arouses the spirit of emulation, excites all the powers of reflection, calls forth all the energies of mind and body, and makes man a greater, nobler, and more efficient being, than when he moves on sluggishly in the dull routine of life, through the unvarying, noiseless calm of despotism. All the rewards, all the distinctions of arbitrary power, can never inspire that energy which arises from the patriotic hope of being useful, and weaving our name with the history of our country.

Philosophy is the most frivolous and shallow of employments in a country where it dares not penetrate into the institutions which surround it. When reflection durst not attempt to amend or soften the lot of mankind, it becomes unmanly and puerile. Look to the literature of those deluded beings, who immured within the walls of their monasteries, separated themselves from the great society of their country, and vainly imagined that they were doing service to their God, by running counter to those great laws which he has impressed upon his creatures, and by violating those principles which he has breathed into us all. What a melancholy picture is presented to our view—what waste of time, of intellect, and of labor, on subjects which true philosophy is almost ashamed to name! What endless discussions, what pointless wit, what inconsequential conclusions—in fine, what empty, useless nonsense, do we find in that absurd philosophy reared up in seclusion, and entirely unconnected with man and the institutions by which he is governed!¹²

¹² As a specimen, let us take the work of the celebrated St. Thomas Aquinas, with the lofty title of Summa Totius Theologiæ, 1250 pages folio. In this work there are 168 articles on Love, 358 on Angels, 200 on the Soul, 85 on Demons, 151 on Intellect, 134 on Law, 3 on the Catamenia, 237 on Sins, and 17 on Virginity. He treats of Angels, says D'Israeli, their substances, orders, offices, natures, habits, &c. as if he himself had been an old experienced Angel. When men are thus cut off from the active pursuits of life, it is curious to contemplate the very trifling character of their discussions and labors. D'Israeli tells us that the following question was a favorite topic for discussion, and thousands of the acutest logicians through more than one century, never resolved it. "When a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about its neck, which is held at the other end by a man, whether is the hog carried to market by the rope or the man?" The same writer too, tells us of a monk who was sedulously employed through a long life, in discovering more than 30,000 new questions concerning the Virgin Mary, with appropriate answers. And it was the same useless industry which induced the monks often to employ their time in writing very minutely, until they brought this worthless art to such perfection, as to write down the whole Iliad on parchment that might be enclosed in a nutshell. In the Imperial Library of Vienna, there is still preserved an extraordinary specimen of chirography by a Jew, who had no doubt imbibed the in-utilitarian spirit of the monks. On a single page, eight inches long by six and a half broad, are written without abbreviations and very legible to the naked eye, the Pentateuch and book of Ruth in German; Ecclesiasticus in Hebrew; the Canticles in Latin; Esther in Syriac; and Deuteronomy in French.

Nothing so much animates and cheers the literary man in his intellectual labors, as the hope of being able to promote the happiness of the human race. Hence the custom among the ancients of blending together military, legislative, and philosophic pursuits, contributed greatly to the progress of mental activity and improvement. When thought may be the forerunner of action—when a happy reflection may be instantaneously transformed into a beneficent institution, then do the contemplations and reflections of a man of genius ennoble and exalt philosophy. He no longer fears that the torch of his reason will be extinguished without shedding a light along the path of active life. He no longer experiences that embarrassing timidity, that crushing shame, which genius, condemned to mere speculation, must ever feel in the presence of even an inferior being, when that being is invested with a power which may influence the destiny of those around him—which may enable him to render the smallest service to his country, or even to wipe away one tear from affliction's cheek.

I am not now dealing in vague conjecture; the history of the past will bear me out in the assertions which I have made. In casting a glance over the nations of antiquity, our attention is arrested by none so forcibly as by the little Democracies of Greece. I will not occupy the attention of this society by the details of that history which is graven upon the memory of us all. I will not stop here to relate the warlike achievements of that extraordinary system of governments which, covering an extent of territory not greater than that of our own state, even with division among themselves, was yet enabled to meet, with their small but devoted bands, the countless hosts of Persia, led on by their proud and vain-glorious monarch, and to roll back in disgrace and defeat, the mighty tide upon the East. Nor will I recount the trophies which they won in philosophy, or describe their beautiful and sublime productions in the arts, which they at once created and perfected. Nor will I detain you with an account of that matchless eloquence displayed in their popular assemblies, which the historian tells us drew together eager, gazing, listening crowds from all Greece, as if about to behold the most splendid spectacle which the imagination of man could conceive, or even the universe could present. The history of Greece is too well known to us all to require these details. A people with such historians as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, acquires a strange pre-eminence—a wonderful notoriety among the nations of the earth. The extraordinary power of this cluster of little states, the superiority of their literature, the resistless energy of the minds and bodies of their citizens, whether for weal or woe—in short, their real greatness, are acknowledged by all.

What then, we may well be permitted to ask, could have generated so much greatness of mind, so much energy and loftiness of character in this apparently secluded corner of Europe, scarcely visible on the world's map? It was not the superiority of her climate and soil. Spain—worn out and degenerate Spain, enjoys the genial climate of the Athenian, and possesses a soil more fertile. It was not the superior protection which her governments afforded to persons and property, which generated this wonderful character. Property was almost as unsafe amid the turbulent factions of Greece, as under the despotisms of the East; and the stroke of tyranny was as often inflicted upon patriots and statesmen, by the ungrateful hand of a capricious and unbalanced democracy, as by the great monarchs of Persia, or by the barbarian kings of Scythia. No!—it was the system of independent state governments, which, badly organized as they were, without a proper system of representation and responsibility, and often shaken by faction and torn to pieces by discord, nevertheless extended their inspiring, animating influence over all, and drew forth from the shade of retirement or solitude the talent and energy of the people, wherever they existed. It was this system of state government which so completely identified each citizen of Greece with that little body politic with which his destiny was connected—which breathed into his soul that ardent patriotism which can sacrifice self upon the altar of our country's happiness, and which could make even an Alcibiades, or a Themistocles, whilst laboring under the bitter curse of their country, stop short in their vindictive career, amid their meditations of mischief and vengeance, and cast many a longing, lingering, pitying look back upon the distresses of that ungrateful city that had driven them forth from its walls.

The great moral which may be drawn from the history of Greece, is one which the patriot in no age or clime should ever forget. In looking over this little system of states, we find uniformly that each displayed genius, energy, and patriotism, while really free and independent; but the moment one was overawed and conquered by its neighbor, it lost its greatness, its patriotism—even its virtue. And when, at last, a great state arose in the north of Greece, and placed a monarch upon its throne, who substituted the obedient spirit of the mercenary soldier and crouching courtier, for the independent genius of liberty and patriotism—who overawed Greece by his armies, and silenced the Council of Amphictyon by his presence—then was it found that the days of Grecian greatness had been numbered, and that the glory of these republics was destroyed forever; then was it seen that the Spartan lost his patriotism, and the Athenian that energy of mind almost creative, which could lead armies and navies to battle and to victory, adorn and enrich the stores of philosophy and literature, agitate the public assemblies from the Bema, or make the marble and the canvass breathe. The battle of Cheronea overthrew at the same time the state governments, the liberties, the prosperity, and, worst of all, the virtue and the towering intellect of Greece.

With the destruction of the governments of her independent states, Greece lost the great animating principle of her system. Forming but an insignificant subject province of the great Macedonian kingdom, and afterwards of the still greater empire of Rome, her sons preserved for a time the books and the mere learning of their renowned ancestors; but the spirit, the energy, the principle of thought and reflection,—the mind,—were all gone. "For more than ten centuries, (says an eloquent historian) the Greeks of Byzantium possessed models of every kind, yet they did not suggest to them one original idea; they did not give birth to a copy worthy of coming after these masterpieces. Thirty millions of Greeks, the surviving depositaries of ancient wisdom, made not a single step, during twelve centuries, in any one of the social sciences. There was not a citizen of free Athens who was not better skilled in the science of politics than the most erudite scholar of Byzantium; their morality was far inferior to that of Socrates—their philosophy to that of Plato and Aristotle, upon whom they were continually commenting. They made not a single discovery in any one of the physical sciences, unless we except the lucky accident which produced the Greek fire. They loaded the ancient poets with annotations, but they were incapable of treading in their footsteps; not a comedy or a tragedy was written at the foot of the ruins of the theatres of Greece; no epic poem was produced by the worshippers of Homer; not an ode by those of Pindar. Their highest literary efforts do not go beyond a few epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology, and a few romances. Such is the unworthy use which the depositaries of every treasure of human wit and genius make of their wealth, during an uninterrupted course of transmission for more than a thousand years." And such will always be the destiny of states as soon as they are moulded into one consolidated empire, with a controlling despotism at the centre.

But while the states of Greece were thus sinking into insignificance, under the crushing weight of one great consolidated government,—in another part of Europe, almost as small and secluded as Greece, little confederacies or associations of independent states were rapidly developing a literature and a character equal to those of the ancient Greek, and affording perhaps a still more striking and beautiful illustration of the truth of the principles for which I have contended this night. It was Italy that first restored intellectual light to Europe, after the long and gloomy night of ignorance and barbarism, which the Goth, the Vandal and the Hun had shed over the western half of the Roman world. It was Italy which recalled youth to the study of laws and philosophy—created the taste for poetry and the fine arts—revived the science and literature of antiquity, and gave prosperity to commerce, manufactures and agriculture. And what was it, let me ask, which made this small peninsula the cradle of commerce, of the arts, sciences and literature—in one word, of the civilization of modern Europe? It was because the whole of this beautiful and interesting country was dotted over with little republics or democracies, which, like those of Greece, applied their stimulating power to every portion of the soil of Italy. These little states, it is true, were factious, turbulent and revolutionary, but they awakened the genius and stimulated the energies of the whole people.

The exertions of this people were truly wonderful. No nation in any age of the world has ever raised up in its cities, and even in its villages, so many magnificent temples,—which even now attract the stranger from every country and clime to the classic soil of Italy. We find throughout this land, whether on the extensive plains of Lombardy, or on the fertile hills of Tuscany and Romagna, or on the now deserted campania of the Patrimony of St. Peter, towns of the most splendid character, reared during the palmy days of modern Italy; and in those cities we find long lines of once stately palaces now tumbling into ruins. Their gates, their columns, their architraves, says the eloquent historian of Italy, remain, but the wood is worm-eaten and decayed, the crystal glasses have been broken, the lead has been taken from the roofs, and the stranger from one end to the other of this monumental land, asks in mournful sadness in each town through which he passes,—Where now is the population which could have required so many habitations? Where is the commerce which could have filled so many magazines? Where are those opulent citizens who could have lived in so many palaces? Where now are those numerous crowds that bowed in reverential awe and devotion before the altars of Christ, of the Virgin and the Saints? Where now are the grandeur and magnificence of the living, which should have replaced that grandeur and magnificence of the dead, of which their monuments so eloquently tell? All are gone. While other nations have been growing in importance and multiplying the materials of their history as they approach the age in which we live, how different has been the mournful destiny of Italy! The present has well been called the epoch of death in that lovely land. When we observe, says the historian, the whole of Italy, whether we examine the physiognomy of the soil, or the works of man, or man himself, we always regard ourselves as being in the land of the dead; every where we are struck by the feebleness and degeneracy of the race that now is, compared with that which has been. The sun of Italy now sheds as warm and vivifying rays over the land as before—the earth remains as fertile—the Appenines present to our view the same varient smiling aspect—the fields are as abundantly watered by the genial showers of heaven, and all the lower animals of nature preserve here their pristine beauty and habits. Man too, at birth, seems in this delightful climate, to be endowed still with the same quick creative imagination, with the same susceptibility of deep, passionate feeling—with the same wonderful aptitude of mind—and yet man alone has changed here! In contrast with his fathers—

"As the slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, That drives the sailor shipless to his home."

It is the change in government—the fatal change in the political destiny of the Italian, which has wrought this melancholy change in his whole nature. When this beautiful land was covered with leagues of independent states, inspired with the genius of liberty and political independence,—the stimulating influence of the government was felt every where—it animated and aroused all—it communicated the spirit of activity and enterprise, the love of home and the ardent love of country to all the citizens alike—from the proud lord of Venice, whose stately palace was lashed by the wave of the Adriatic, to the poor peasant whose thatched and humble cottage lay in some secluded solitary hollow of the Alps or the Appenines. Under this system of government there was no favored spot upon which the treasures of the nation were expended; there was no Thebes, no Babylon, no imperial Rome built up, adorned and beautified by the degradation and utter prostration of all the rest. We might almost say of Italy what has been affirmed of Omnipotence itself—its centre was every where, its circumference no where. Every little independent state, no matter how limited its area or small its population, had its great men, its thriving cities, its noble monuments. The little Florentine democracy with but eighty thousand souls, had more great men within its limits than any of the great kingdoms of Europe; and all were animated with the spirit of patriotism, of industry,¹³ of learning.

¹³ "The habit of industry," says Sismondi, "was the distinctive characteristic of the Italians even to the middle of the 15th century. The first rank at Florence, Venice, and Genoa, was occupied by merchants; and the families who possessed the offices of the state, of the church or the army, did not for that reason give up their business. Philip Strozzi, brother-in-law of Leo X, the father of Mareschal Strozzi, and the grandfather of Capua, the friend of several sovereigns, and the first citizen of Italy, remained even to the end of his life chief of a banking house. He had seven sons, but in spite of his immense fortune, he suffered none of them to be brought up in idleness."

No wonder then that the citizens of Italy should have prospered amid their domestic broils, their factions, their revolutions—even amid the sanguinary conflicts of the Guelph and the Ghibeline. If the energy and elasticity of the mind be not destroyed by the pressure of despotism, it is curious to contemplate the wonderfully recuperative powers of man, and to behold the appalling difficulties which he can surmount, undismayed and unscathed. You may prostrate him to day, but the energy and vitality that is within him will raise him up on the morrow.¹⁴ Of all sorts of destruction, of every kind of death, that is the worst, because the most productive of melancholy consequences, which reaches the mind itself. That system of government which slays the mind, is the system which, at the same time reaches the sanctuary of the heart, overthrows the purity of morals, and forges the fetters for the slave. And such a government as this have the Spaniard the Frenchman and the German rivetted but too fatally upon Italy. The day that saw those modern Goths and Vandals pouring their mercenary hordes over the Alps to rob and plunder, was a black day for Italy, and well might the friend of that lovely land have then exclaimed in the language of the poet,

"Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river."

¹⁴ Whilst Italy was free, there was no country which could repair its losses with so much despatch; the town that was sacked and burnt to-day, would be built up and stored with wealth on the morrow, and the losses of one excited the sympathies and support of all those engaged in the same cause. When the Emperor Frederic carried fire and sword through the Milanese territory, and left the treasury of that state completely exhausted, we are told that the rich citizens soon replenished it from their private purses, contenting themselves in the mean time with coarse bread, and cloaks of black stuff. And at the command of their consuls they left Milan to join their fellow citizens in rebuilding with their own hands the walls and houses of Tortona, Rosata, Tricate, Galiate, and other towns, which had suffered in the contest for the common cause.

The independence of the little states of Italy is now gone, and with it all the real greatness of that country. The power that now sways the Italian, emanates from a nation situated afar off on the banks of the Danube. And can we wonder while the Austrian soldier stands sentinel in the Italian cities, that their citizens should

"Creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets."

But enough of a spectacle so sad as this!¹⁵

¹⁵ Small states, if truly independent, are very favorable to the production of great characters, and even great virtues. "The regeneration of liberty in Italy," says Sismondi, "was signalized still more, if it were possible, by the development of the moral, than by that of the intellectual character of the Italians. The sympathy existing among fellow-citizens, from the habit of living for each other, and by each other—of connecting every thing with the good of all, produced in those republics virtues which despotic states cannot even imagine." But the moment the independence of the small states is destroyed by the overshadowing and overawing influence of larger ones, then does the system work the most disastrous consequences upon the political, moral, and literary character of the citizens. A little state overawed by a large one, instantly has recourse to cunning, intrigue, and duplicity, to accomplish its ends. Cæsar Borgia in Italy, says Mr. Hume, had recourse to more villainy, hypocrisy, and meanness, to get possession of a few miles of territory, than was practised by Julius Cæsar, Zenghis, or Tamerlane for the conquest of a large portion of the world. Hence we are not to wonder that Italy should become the most infamous of all schools, in the production of subtile, intriguing, hypocritical politicians, and that the literature should soon become as corrupt as the political morals of the country. The Marini, the Achillini in poetry, and the Bernini in the arts, had a reputation similar to that of Concini, Mazarini, Catherine, and Mary di Medici in politics.

Did the limits which I have prescribed to myself in this address allow it, I could easily adduce the history of the Swiss Cantons, the Netherlands and Holland, the Hanseatic League, the little states formerly around the Baltic, and even the Germanic Confederation, as confirmation strong of the truth of the positions which I have taken in favor of the federative system. Indeed I might go farther than this, and show that the feudal aristocracy of the middle ages, horrible as was its oppression, calamitous as were its petty wars, and feuds, and dissensions, intolerable as was that anarchical confusion which it generated in Europe towards the close of the tenth century, was nevertheless the instrument which kept alive the mind of man in the great nations of Christendom, by splitting up the powers of government among the Baronial Lords, and thereby preventing that fatal tendency to centralism and consolidation, which would inevitably have shrouded the mind of Europe in inextricable darkness. Far be from me that vain presumption which would dare to scan the mysterious plans of Providence; but I have always thought that the regeneration of the mind of Europe required that the barbarian should come from the North and the East—that an Alaric, a Genseric and an Attila, should pour out the vials of their wrath upon the Roman's head—that the monstrous, corrupt and gigantic fabric of his power might be broken to pieces by barbarian hordes, who had not the genius and political skill requisite to establish another great military despotism on its ruins.

After this review I turn with pleasure again to our own system of government. We have seen how stimulating were the little republics of Greece and of Italy, to the genius of those countries. But their systems were not made for peaceable endurance—they were too disunited, too turbulent, too prone to civil wars; hence they either fell a prey to some ambitious state in their own system, or invited by their reckless internal dissensions the foreigner into their land, who broke down their institutions, overthrew their liberty, and imposed upon their submissive necks the galling yoke of military despotism. But those venerated fathers of our republics, who framed the federal constitution, came forward to their task in full view of the history of the republics of the ancient and modern world, with that almost holy spirit of freedom and patriotism which gave them that undaunted courage and unremitting perseverance that enabled them to wade through the blood and turmoil of the revolution. They completed their task, and the wisdom and virtue of our confederacy did sanction their work, and long may that work endure if administered in that spirit of purity and virtue which inspired those who framed it.

Our states are much larger than the little democracies of ancient Greece or of modern Italy—the new and improved principle of representation, combined with the modern improvements in the whole machinery of government, have rendered the republican form much better suited to large states than formerly. Some of our states may perhaps be too large, and others too small. But our ancestors very wisely avoided that geometrical policy, which would have divided our country into equal squares, like France in the dark days of her revolution. "No man ever was attached," says Burke, "by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He never will glory in belonging to the chequer No. 71, or to any other badge ticket. We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighborhoods and our habitual provincial connections;" and these ties and habits were respected by our forefathers. No sovereign state, no matter how small, was disfranchised—the giant and the dwarf had their rights and liberties alike respected and secured in this new system, and all were bound together by a wise and beneficent plan of government, based upon the mutual interests and sympathies of all the members of the confederacy—a plan which was wisely framed to give lasting peace to our country, and to demonstrate the inapplicability to our portion of the western hemisphere at least, of the gloomy philosophy of the European statesman, that the natural condition of man is war. Thus organized, our system was calculated to apply the beneficial stimulus of government to every portion of our soil and every division of our population, and at the same time in the midst of profound peace and freedom of intercourse, both social and commercial, among the states, to secure that enlarged and extended theatre for action, which may stimulate and reward the exalted genius and talent of the country, and crown the pyramid of our greatness.

But I must turn from this view of my subject, which has ever been so delightful to my mind, to the contemplation always gloomy, of the dangerous evils which may beset us in our progress onwards. It is too true that there can be nothing pure in this world; good and evil are always intertwined. It has well been said that the wave which wafts to our shore the genial seed that may spring up and gladden our land with luxuriant vegetation, may unfold the deadly crocodile.

One of the most fatal evils with which the republican system of government is liable to be assailed, is the diffusion of a spirit of agrarianism among the indigent classes of society. This spirit is now abroad in the world—it is fearfully developing itself in the insurrectionary heavings and tumults of continental Europe, which, however ineffectual now, do nevertheless mark the great internal conflagration—"the march of that mighty burning, which however intangible by human vigilance, is yet hollowing the ground under every community of the civilized world." England's most eloquent and learned divine, tells us but too truly that "there now sits an unnatural scowl on the aspect of the population, a resolved sturdiness in their attitude and gait; and whether we look to the profane recklessness of their habits, or to the deep and settled hatred which rankles in their hearts, we cannot but read in these moral characteristics of this land, the omens of some great and impending overthrow."

In our own more happy country, the almost unlimited extension of suffrage in the most populous states, the frequent appeals made to the indigent and the destitute by demagogues for the purpose of inflaming their passions, and of exciting that most blighting and deadly hostility of all, the hostility of the poor against the rich—the tumults and riots at the elections in our great cities—the lawless mobs of the north which have already set the civil authority at defiance, and have pulled down and destroyed the property of the citizen—all are but premonitory symptoms of the approaching calamity—they are but the rumbling sound which precedes the mighty shock of the terrible earthquake. If these things happen now, what may we not expect hereafter? At present the great territorial resources of our country offer the most stimulating reward to labor and enterprise. The laborer of to-day looks forward, and hopes, yes, knows, that by his industry he is to be the capitalist of to-morrow. He feels a prospective interest in the defence of property. The little German farmer with a hundred acres of poor land in the Key Stone State, clad in the coarsest raiment, contented with the simplest food, and saving from his hard earnings the small sum of one hundred dollars a year, would not wish the property of the country to be thrown in jeopardy—he would shudder at the idea of a general scramble, lest he might lose that little patrimony around which the very affections of his heart have been twined.

But the time must come when the powerfully elastic spring of our rapidly increasing numbers shall fill up our wide spread territory with a dense population—when the great safety valve of the west will be closed against us—when millions shall be crowded into our manufactories and commercial cities—then will come the great and fearful pressure upon the engine—then will the line of demarkation stand most palpably drawn between the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the laborer—then will thousands, yea, millions arise, whose hard lot it may be to labor from morn till eve through a long life, without the cheering hope of passing from that toilsome condition in which the first years of their manhood found them, or even of accumulating in advance that small fund which may release the old and infirm from labor and toil, and mitigate the sorrows of declining years. Many there will be even, who may go to and fro and be able to say in the melancholy language of Holy Writ, "the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air their nest, but the son of man has not where to lay his head." When these things shall come—when the millions, who are always under the pressure of poverty, and sometimes on the verge of starvation, shall form your numerical majority, (as is the case now in the old countries of the world) and universal suffrage shall throw the political power into their hands, can you expect that they will regard as sacred the tenure by which you hold your property? I almost fear the frailties and weakness of human nature too much, to anticipate confidently such justice. When hunger is in the land, we can scarcely expect, by any species of legerdemain, to turn the eyes and thoughts of the sufferers from the flesh pots of Egypt. The old Roman populace demanded a regular distribution of corn from the public granaries; the Grecian populace received bribes, fined and imprisoned their wealthy men, or made them build galleys, equip soldiers, give public feasts, and furnish the victims for the sacrifices at their own expense.¹⁶ The mode of action in modern times may be changed, but the result will be the same if the spirit of agrarianism shall once get abroad in our land. France has already furnished us with the great moral. First comes disorganization and legislative plunder, then the struggle of factions and civil war, and lastly a military despotism, into whose arms all will be driven by the intolerable evils of anarchy and rapine. I fondly hope that the future may bring along with it a sovereign remedy for these evils, but what that remedy may be, it is past perhaps the sagacity of man now to determine. We can only say in the language of Kepler upon a far different subject,—"Hæc et cetera hujusmodi latent in pandectis œvi sequentis, non antea discenda, quam librum hunc deus arbiter seculorum recluserit mortalibus."

¹⁶ When an individual was tried before an Athenian tribunal, his wealth was generally a serious disadvantage to his cause, and there was nothing which the defence labored harder to establish than the poverty of the accused. "I know," says the orator Lisias, in his defence of Nicophemus, "how difficult it will be effectually to refute the report of the great riches of Nicophemus. The present scarcity of money in the city, and the wants of the treasury which the forfeiture has been calculated upon to supply, will operate against me." In the celebrated dialogue of Xenophon, called the Banquet, he makes a rich man who has suddenly become poor, congratulate himself upon his poverty; "inasmuch," he says, "as cheerfulness and confidence are preferable to constant apprehension, freedom to slavery, being waited upon, to waiting upon others. When I was a rich man in this city, I was under the necessity of courting the sycophants, knowing it was in their power to do me mischief which I could little return. Nevertheless, I was continually receiving orders from the people, to undertake some expenses for the commonwealth, and I was not allowed to go any where out of Attica. But now I have lost all my foreign property, and nothing accrues from my Attic estate, and all my goods are sold, I sleep any where fearless; I am considered as faithful to the government; I am never threatened with prosecutions, but I have it in my power to make others fear; as a freeman I may stay in the country or go out of it as I please; the rich rise from their seats for me as I approach, and make way for me as I walk; I am now like a tyrant, whereas I was before an absolute slave; and whereas before I paid tribute to the people, now a tribute from the public maintains me." This picture, though perhaps overwrought, marks still but too conclusively the agrarian spirit in Greece.

In the mean time I may boldly assert that the frame work of our southern society is better calculated to ward off the evils of this agrarian spirit, which is so destructive to morals, to mind and to liberty, than any other mentioned in the annals of history. Domestic slavery, such as ours, is the only institution which I know of, that can secure that spirit of equality among freemen, so necessary to the true and genuine feeling of republicanism, without propelling the body politic at the same time into the dangerous vices of agrarianism, and legislative intermeddling between the laborer and the capitalist. The occupations which we follow, necessarily and unavoidably create distinctions in society. It is said that all occupations are honorable. This is certainly true, if you mean that no honest employment is disgraceful. But to say that all confer equal honor, if well followed even, is not true. Such an assertion militates alike against the whole nature of man and the voice of reason. But whatever may be the vain deductions of mere theorists upon this subject, one thing is certain—Reason informed me of its truth long before experience had shown it to me in actual life—The hirelings who perform all the menial offices of life, will not and cannot be treated as equals by their employers. And those who stand ready to execute all our commands, no matter what they may be, for mere pecuniary reward, cannot feel themselves equal to us in reality, however much their reason may be bewildered by the voice of sophistry.

Now, let us see what is likely to be the effect of universal suffrage in a state where there are no slaves. Either the dependant classes, the laborers and menial servants, will be driven forward by the dictation of their employers and the bribery of the man of property, thus giving the government a proclivity towards an aristocracy of wealth;¹⁷ or they become discontented with their condition, and ask why these differences among beings pronounced equal—they look with eyes of cupidity upon the fortunes of the rich. The demagogue perceives their ominous sullenness, and marks the hatred which is rankling in their hearts—then the parties of the rich and the poor are formed—then come the legislative plunder and the dark train of evils consequent on the spirit of equality, which is in fact, in such a community, the spirit of agrarianism.

¹⁷ Men whose impulses are all communicated by the expectation of small pecuniary rewards, quickly acquire that suppleness of conscience, which renders them peculiarly liable to bribery. Take, for example, the waiter in an hotel—it is the hope of little gains that moves him in any direction which you may dictate, and which makes him a ready tool for the execution of any project whatever. His motto is, I take the money and my employer the responsibility. Bring this man to the polls, and offer him money for his vote, and the probability is that he would not refuse that which the whole education and training of his life would impel him to receive.

But in our slaveholding country the case is far different. Our laboring classes and menials are all slaves of a different color from their masters—the source of greatest distinction among the freemen is taken away; and the spirit of equality, the true spirit of genuine republicanism may exist here,—without leading on to corruption on the one side or agrarianism on the other.¹⁸ Political power is thus taken from the hands of those who might abuse it, and placed in the hands of those who are most interested in its judicious exercise. Our law most wisely ordains that the slaves "shall not be sought for in public council, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit high on the judges' seats nor understand the sentence of judgment; they cannot declare justice and judgment; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?" Lycurgus, more than two thousand years ago, in his celebrated system of laws, was so well aware of the aristocratic feeling generated by diversity of occupation, that he decreed in order that a perfect spirit of equality might reign among the Spartans, that slaves alone should practice the most laborious arts, or fill the menial stations. And in this particular he showed perhaps as much sagacity as in any other law of the whole system. We want no legislation in the south to secure this effect—it flows spontaneously from our social system.

¹⁸ I will take leave here to introduce a short extract from my Essay on Slavery, in corroboration of the assertions which I have made. "The citizen of the north will not shake hands familiarly with his servant, and converse, and laugh, and dine with him, no matter how honest and respectable he may be. But go to the south, and you will find that no white man feels such inferiority of rank as to be unworthy of association with those around him. Color alone is here the badge of distinction, the true mark of aristocracy; and all who are white are equal, in spite of the variety of occupation. The same thing is observed in the West Indies. 'Of the character common to the white resident of the West Indies,' says B. Edwards, 'it appears to me that the leading feature is an independent spirit, and a display of conscious equality throughout all ranks and conditions. The poorest white person seems to consider himself nearly on a level with the condition of the richest; and emboldened by this idea, he approaches his employer with extended hand, and a freedom which, in the countries of Europe, is seldom displayed by men in the lower orders of life towards their superiors.'"

But whilst the political effects of our social system are so peculiarly beneficial, the moral effects are no less striking and advantageous. I have no hesitation in affirming that the relation between capitalist and laborer in the south is kinder, and more productive of genuine attachment, than exists between the same classes any where else on the face of the globe. The slave is happy and contented with his lot, unless indeed the very demons of Pandemonium shall be suffered to come among us and destroy his happiness by their calumnious falsehoods and hypocritical promises. He compares himself with his own race and his own color alone, and he sees that all are alike—he does not covet the wealth of the rich man, nor envy that happiness which liberty imparts to the patriot, but he identifies all his interests with those of his master—free from care—free from that constant feeling of insecurity which continually haunts the poor man of other countries, he moves on in the round of his existence, cheerful, contented and grateful.¹⁹ We have no Manchester and Smithfield riots here—no breaking of machinery—no scowl of discontent or sullenness hovering over the brow—no midnight murders for the money which we have in our houses—no melancholy forebodings of that agrarian spirit which calls up the very demon of wrath to apply the torch to the political edifice. The statistics of the slaveholding population prove that it is the most quiet and secure population in the world—there are fewer great crimes and murders among them than in any other form in which society can exist. I defy the world too, to produce a parallel to the rapid improvement of the slave on our continent since the period of his landing from the shores of his forefathers. And when the philanthropist tells us to plant our colonies on the coast of that benighted region, that the tide of civilization may be rolled back on Africa, the very enthusiasm of his language marks the inappreciable improvement which slavery has here wrought upon the character of the negro. On the other hand the master is attached to his slaves by every tie of interest and sympathy, generated by a connection that sometimes lasts for life. He does not work them to-day for sixteen hours, reducing them to mere bread and water, and capriciously discharge them to-morrow from his employment, and turn them adrift without money or resource, upon a cold and inhospitable world. When their labor will not support themselves, the master is bound to consume his capital for their sustenance. There are evils, no doubt, incidental to this relation—but where is the relation of life exempt from them?²⁰

¹⁹ Any one who has ever seen the negro at hard labor by the side of the white man, or who has noticed him while performing menial services along with his white associate, has marked no doubt the striking difference. The negro is all gaiety and cheerfulness—his occupation seems to ennoble him. His companion, on the contrary, whom the world calls a freeman, but really treats as a slave, is seen sullen and discontented, and feels himself degraded for the very reason that he is called a freeman.

²⁰ Whatever philanthropists may say upon the subject, I believe the history of the world will bear me out in the assertion that slavery is certainly the most efficient and perhaps the only means by which the contact of the civilized man with the barbarian can contribute to the advantage and civilization of the latter. The relation of master and slave is the only means which has ever yet been devised by the wisdom of man, capable of bringing the element of civilization into close union with that of barbarism, without either dragging down the civilized man to a level with the barbarian, or corrupting and then exterminating the latter in the attempt to elevate him. Every one who is acquainted with the condition of society in our southern country, will bear witness to the truth of the assertion, that whilst slavery by producing the closest and most constant intercourse between the whites and blacks, elevates the character, purifies the morals, and speeds on the civilization of the latter, it has not the slightest tendency to introduce their barbarism or their vices among the former. It is for this very reason, while virtue and knowledge may travel downwards, and vice and barbarism cannot move upwards, that the institution of such slavery as ours becomes the greatest security for virtue, and the most certain preservative of morals. It is this inestimable feature in this most slandered institution, which keeps the upper stratum of the social fabric in the healthiest and soundest state, which makes the character of the slaveholder so lofty, generous, chivalrous, and sternly incorruptible wherever we find him. It is this same feature too which contributes most to elevate and adorn the character of the mistress of slaves—which enshrines her heart in the very purity and constancy of the affections, and makes her the ornament and immaculate blessing of that delightful domestic sanctuary, which is never to be polluted by the vile and wicked arts of the base designing corrupter of the female heart.

What then, in presence of these facts, must we think of the slanderous tongues that would dare asperse the character of southern females—that would endeavor to blacken that almost spotless purity of heart, which I hope will forever remain the proud characteristic of southern women? Ignorance does not excuse such calumniators. The men who can attack, without having taken even the trouble to ascertain the facts, that class whose virtue constitutes their greatest ornament, and whom the usages and customs of the world have driven from the active bustling arena of life into the shade of retirement, there to be loved, honored, and protected by all who are noble and generous, show to the world the real hollowness of their hearts and the reckless impurity of their intentions. But when they cannot even plead such ignorance, their past lives should not be suffered to shield them from the imputation of crime, and the mantle of that pure and beautiful religion, preached by the meek Saviour of mankind, was never designed to cover the canting hypocrisy of the insidious calumnious slanderer. It is Sterne who says that the man who is capable of doing one dirty trick can do another—he thus at once unmasks his real character, and stands forth confessed in all his naked deformity before the world. And we may perhaps but too truly assert, that those whose minds are incapable of comprehending the purity, whilst they maliciously asperse the innocence of female character, are the beings who are most apt at last to be displayed as the true Tartuffes of the world.

I would say then, let us cherish this institution which has been built up by no sin of ours—let us cleave to it as the ark of our safety. Expediency, morality and religion, alike demand its continuance; and perhaps I would not hazard too much in the prediction, that the day will come when the whole confederacy will regard it as the sheet anchor of our country's liberty.

I will now conclude my long address, by a brief notice of two results which may happen to our system of government, either of which would be fatal to the system—dismemberment on the one side, or consolidation, on the other. The evils of dismemberment may be quickly told. Separate governments, or confederacies, would of course have rivalries and jealousies and wars. Our militia would be found inadequate to our defence; standing armies and navies would be established: and all history has shown that these will trample upon the civil authority. War with their concomitant establishments, navies and armies, entail the heaviest expense on nations.²¹ These expenditures require taxation; and heavy taxation in an extensive range of country, whether levied on imports or on native productions, would be sure to lead on to partial and vicious legislation, to the intolerable oppression of one part for the benefit of another. And all the guards and checks which constitutional charters would impose on government, could not prevent the rapid concentration of power into the hands of the executive, in most of our independent states, amid wars, armies, navies, taxation, expenditures and increasing patronage of the governments. We should, I fear, exhibit the picture of Europe to the world, with governments perhaps less balanced²² and more sanguinary in their wars. It is more than probable, then, that if ever disunion shall come, as has been said by a distinguished statesman,—we shall close the book of the republics, and open that of the kings, not in name perhaps—but in reality.

²¹ It may perhaps be affirmed with truth, that there is scarcely a nation in Europe, with a population equal to that of the United States, whose army does not cost more than the whole expenses of our federal government. The military statistics of Europe are truly formidable. Great Britain keeps at home an army of 100,000 men, and 250,000 in India. France has a standing army of 280,000; Austria 271,000; Prussia 162,000; and Russia 800,000. The United States have 6,000, with a population more than the half of Austria, and greater than that of Prussia. Even the kingdom of Sardinia, with a population of a little more than one-fourth of ours, has an army more than seven times as great; and Spain, with a population not so great as ours, has an army fifteen times as great. Comment is unnecessary.

²² If a nation must have monarchy, I have no hesitation in saying that it should not be isolated. It should be "buttressed by establishments." If we must have Kings, it would be better that the Lords and Commons should follow. Kings, Lords, and Commons are perhaps the nearest approach which the monarchical form of government can make towards liberty. When there is no intermediate power between the king and the people, every dispute between the parties, for want of a conciliatory compromise, brings the nation at once to blows; and the immediate issue is necessarily either a despotism established, or a dynasty overthrown. The chances against a perfect balance are infinite. But in our country we can never have a regular nobility. Antiquity is absolutely necessary to such an establishment. Bonaparte tried the experiment of a suddenly created nobility, and it entirely failed; although his nobles were much more talented and efficient than the ancient noblesse. Bonaparte's nobles besides were the most unprincipled, and the most remorselessly rapacious of modern Europe; and this perhaps is the almost necessary character of an upstart nobility.

This would certainly be the result in the non-slaveholding states, where the agrarian spirit, co-operating with executive usurpation, would inevitably overthrow the balance of the government, and lead on eventually to military despotism. But such is my confidence in the influence of slavery on the slaveholder—so certain am I, judging from all fair reasoning on the subject, and from the past history of the world, that the spirit of liberty and of equality, glows with the most unqualified intensity in the bosoms of the masters of slaves, that I believe the slaveholding states, with all the horrors of disunion against them, would nevertheless, under the impulse of this spirit, so ineradicable among them, be enabled to preserve their liberties, and arrest their governments in their dangerous proclivity towards monarchy. It is true, circumstances might often even here concentrate too much power in the executive department; but the owners of slaves, with a spirit like that of the Barons at Runnimede, would embrace the first opportunity to take back the power that had slipt from their hands; and the absence of any thing like a formidable agrarian party, would deprive the executive of that infallible resource to which, under other circumstances, it might resort, to obtain the power necessary to break through the trammels of constitutions, and finally to entrench itself safely behind military power. Where has a greater love for liberty been shown, or a more noble struggle made for its preservation than in Poland? And in our own country, it is a matter of history, that in no portion of it has the spirit of freedom so fervently developed itself as in the Southern States, nor has any portion been found more constantly and effectually battling against power. Two administrations have been overthrown since the constitution went into operation, and it has been Southern talent, and Southern energy, which have accomplished it. Whenever the South shall present a solid unbroken phalanx against usurpation, I hazard little in the prediction, that it will generally accomplish its ends.

But disunion, with all its attendant evils, would not so completely prostrate the mind, and relax all the energies of man, as the other more dangerous result which may happen—I mean consolidation! A number of independent governments, no matter how bad, no matter how despotic, must to some extent at least, exert a stimulating influence, each over a portion of its own territory. The greater the number of governments therefore, the greater the number of stimulants, as long as each one remains independent. And the probability is, that a sort of political equilibrium would be formed very soon on our continent, which would, as in Europe, preserve the territorial integrity of the smaller states, and prevent the larger from a dangerous accumulation of power.²³

²³ It is curious to look now to the condition of Europe, and compare it with the same quarter of the world three hundred years ago, and to see how small the change in the division of countries after all the wars, bloodshed, and expense which have been inflicted on it. And some of the greatest gainers too have been the small states. The Duke of Savoy, for example, now takes honorable rank among the second rate monarchs, under the more imposing title of King of Sardinia, and with a territory more than doubled in extent. The Marquis of Brandenburg now hails as King of Prussia, and takes his station among the great powers in Europe with a greatly augmented dominion. It is the system of the political equilibrium in Europe which has bridled the great nations, and prevented them from swallowing up the smaller. "Consider," says Sir James Macintosh, in one of his ablest speeches, "the Republic of Geneva—think of her defenceless position, in the very jaws of France; but think also of her undisturbed security, of her profound quiet, of the brilliant success with which she applied herself to industry and literature, while Louis XIV was pouring his myriads into Italy before her gates. Call to mind that happy period, when we scarcely dreamed more of the subjugation of the feeblest republic of Europe, than of the conquest of her mightiest empire—and say, whether any spectacle can be imagined more beautiful to the moral eye, or which affords a more striking proof of progress in the noblest principles of true civilization."

But if ever our state institutions shall be overthrown, and the concentration of all the powers into one great central government shall mould this system of republics into one grand consolidated empire, then will the last and greatest evil which can befal our country have arrived. The wide extent of our territory, and the numbers of our population, which under a system of confederated republics, would awaken the genius and patriotism of the country, and call forth an almost resistless energy and enterprise in our citizens, would then be a blighting curse—the bane of our land. All eyes would be turned to that great and fearful engine at the centre, whose oppressive action would paralyze all the parts, whilst it would bind them together in indissoluble union—in the numbness and torpor of death itself.

Could it be possible for our government, after such consolidation, to retain its democratic form, then would it become the most corrupt, the most demoralizing, the most intolerably oppressive government which the annals of history could furnish. That diversity of climate, of soil, of character, and of interest—that great difference of condition springing from the existence or non-existence of slavery, all of which, under a mild, federative system, would increase the general happiness and add to the blessings of union, by interlocking, in the harmony of free trade, all the interests of the parts, would then lead on to vicious combinations in our national legislature, for the purpose of robbing one portion of the union for the benefit of another—then would be formed our fixed and sectional majorities, who by their unprincipled and irresponsible legislation, would prostrate the rights and suck out the very substance from the minority. The history of past ages informs us that physical force has hitherto been the great engine which has distributed the wealth and overthrown the liberties of nations. But the system would be changed here. Governmental action and legislative jugglery would accomplish more effectually what the sword has done elsewhere. And to the oppressed there would be but one right left—the right that belongs to the worm when trodden on—the right of turning upon the oppressor and shaking off his iron grasp, if possible. This is the most valuable of all rights to the European citizen—because there the few, the units, are the oppressors, and the millions are the oppressed; and when tyranny has passed beyond the point of endurance, and the people are at last roused to a sense of the injustice and wrongs which they are suffering, they rise in their might and pull down the pillars of the political edifice.

But in our own country, if the state governments shall ever be broken down, and state marks obliterated, what will the right of resistance be worth to us? When the oppression comes from the greedy many, and is exerted over the proscribed few, is it not worse than mockery to tell them they may resist in the last resort—that the minority, enfeebled and impoverished by legislative plunder, without army, navy, or treasury, disorganized, unsteady, and vacillating in its plans, may rise against the many who possess the advantages of physical force, wealth, organization, together with the whole power of an energetic government, which can break the ranks of the minority, and sow the seeds of dissension among them, by the corrupting influence of its mighty patronage, or attack and conquer by its force those who shall first have the temerity to take the field against its oppression? Resistance is worth but little, when the strong man, armed and resolute, has pushed me, feeble and unarmed, to the wall.²⁴

²⁴ The principle of the absolute majority claimed by a great central government, would make the republican form of government more intolerable than any other, for the following reasons: 1st. The parties may be permanent, and consequently the oppression may be permanent likewise. 2d. An individual with power to oppress may or may not do it. Even Nero or Caligula may refrain from exactions—but a multitude being always governed by the selfish principle, will be sure to oppress if they have the power; the operation of the selfish principle on one man is a matter of chance,—on a multitude, it is a certainty. 3d. In such a government, the influence of the public opinion of the oppressed produces the least possible influence on the oppressors, first, because the majorities and minorities being almost always sectional, the opinions of the latter are not likely to be known to the former; and secondly, if they were known they would produce little effect, because the former have on their side the majority of public opinion, and therefore would generally disregard that of the minority. 4th. The rapacity of such a government would be increased, from the necessity of procuring a large dividend for so great a number of divisors.

But let not the many console themselves with the vain belief that democracy would long survive the consolidation of our government—that very power which they would endeavor so sedulously to concentrate in the hands of one great central government, would be quickly made to recoil upon their own heads. The executive department, which would be built up and established by the dominant majority, the better to accomplish its own selfish purposes, would quickly become omnipotent; and when once safely entrenched in the impregnable bulwarks of its power, like Athens enclosed in the walls of Themistocles, it would bid defiance to all assaults, and all would then be ground down to the same ignominious common level. The Executive, in such a system, would be all—the People, nothing! We should then be reduced to the condition of the silent crushing despotisms of Asia—with every principle of improvement gone, and the whole elasticity of mind destroyed. Soon would we, then, hug the chains which bound us; and bend the knee in degrading servility before him who had rivetted them on us. Soon would we be ready to use the idolatrous language of the Roman bard,

"Erit ille mihi semper Deus: illius aram
Sœpe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuet agnus."

A great empire speedily assimilates every thing to its own genius. No long season is requisite to generate the spirit of submission. The monarch that first mounts the throne is often the most worshipped. The first emperor of Rome had not descended to his grave before the servility of his subjects had become so disgusting as to call forth censure from even the monarch himself.²⁵

²⁵ Augustus, at the expiration of his third term in the imperial office, was accosted by the people at a public entertainment with the title of "Lord," or "Master," which so much disgusted him, that he published a serious edict on the following day, forbidding such a title, and saying,

"My name is Cæsar, and not Master."

These great despotisms too, when once established, are likely long to endure. Great empires have an extraordinary vitality—a wonderful tenacity of existence; they but too closely resemble that fabled serpent whose parts when forced asunder were quickly drawn together again and united into a living body. There has always been something painfully revolting to my mind in the contemplation of the history of great empires. From our boyhood we contract a horror of eastern despotisms, with their great monarchs, their satraps and tyrants; and who that has read the luminous page of Gibbon and contemplated the imperial despot with his

Prætors, pro-consuls to their provinces Hasting, or on return, in robes of state, Lictors and rods the ensigns of their power, Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings,

but sickens at the bare contemplation of such despotic machinery. And whilst we peruse the eloquent recital of these internal throes and convulsions, which to-day would seem to break the empire into fragments and scatter them to the very winds of heaven,—but would cease on the morrow, by the elevation to the throne of perhaps some barbarian military chieftain from the banks of the Rhine or the Danube, binding again together in the rude embrace of military power the conquered parts of the empire,—we cannot but weep over the fearful immortality with which such a nation seems almost to be endowed. It reminds us but too strongly of that persecuted being, gifted with a cursed immortality, whom the fables of antiquity reported to have been bound down upon the mountain, with a vulture forever lacerating his liver, which grew as fast as it was destroyed. When contemplating the horrors of such a government, we almost hail with pleasure the advent of the Goth and the Vandal, whose barbarian power alone could break it into fragments. The death of such an empire is always hard—painfully, fearfully hard! Unless its destruction is prepared from without, there are no elements within that can achieve it. The gravity of the parts too towards the centre, is so wonderfully great, that disunion can never be effected.

It is mournful to behold how the rights of man, and of nations, may be destroyed by the mere magnitude of empire. Humanity now weeps when wronged and injured Poland shows symptoms of a revolt,—we know that the blood of the patriotic Pole will be shed in vain, and that the Russian and the Cossack soldier will soon come to place the galling yoke again upon his neck; and yet if Poland were united to a nation no larger than herself—Poland would have rights, and what is better still, Poland would have the power to defend them. And when she should send her petitions to the throne and demand redress, the Autocrat would dare not answer her deputies by pointing them to his Marshal, and telling them that he had his orders and would execute them.

Let us then forever guard against the dangerous evil of consolidation. Let us foster and cherish and love our State institutions as the palladium of our liberties and the nursery of our real greatness. Let the motto inscribed upon the banner of each patriot, in regard to his state, be that which was placed upon the urn that enclosed the heart of the philosopher of Ferney, "Mon cœur est ici, mon esprit est partout;" and sure we may be, that this elementary training of the affections will not destroy a proper love for the whole, but is absolutely necessary, to keep the State and Federal governments moving, in those distinct orbits which have been prescribed to them by the wisdom of our ancestors.

But, whatever may be the course of other states,—I hope our own Virginia,—so rich in soil, but so much richer in her noble sons who have grown up on that soil and illustrated her history, will ever cherish with becoming affection her own institutions—for certain she may be, when a great consolidated central government shall have fixed its embrace on the Union—the sun of her glory will have set forever—certain she may be, that in the awful silence of central despotism, no such statesmen as Washington, Jefferson or Madison, will ever again arise upon her soil—no such men as Wythe, Pendleton and Roane, will grace her benches—nor will the thrilling eloquence of the Henrys, the Masons and the Randolphs, be ever again heard within her borders. The power that then reposes at the centre, may, after the example of the most wily and politic of Roman emperors, suffer the mere state forms to remain, but the spirit, the energetic life, the independence that once animated them, will all be gone. They will then obey an impulse that comes from without; and like the consuls, the senate, and the tribunes of imperial Rome, they will but speak the will and execute the commands of the Cæsar upon the throne. Then indeed may the passing stranger, when he beholds this capital, once the proud theatre for the exhibition of the conflicts of mind and talents, exclaim—Poor Virginia! how art thou fallen!

But I sincerely hope, that the patriotism and the intelligence of the people of this country, will be sufficient to keep our state and federal governments moving on harmoniously in their legitimate spheres,—avoiding at the same time dismemberment on the one side, or the more dangerous tendency of consolidation on the other. All, however, depends on the virtue, the intelligence, and the vigilance of the People. Power to be restrained must always be watched with Argus eyes—the people must always be on the alert—they must never slacken their vigilance. If they have succeeded to-day in stripping the usurper of his assumed powers—let them not remit their exertions on the morrow, but let them remember that power after "these gentle prunings" does sometimes vegetate but the more luxuriantly. If we shall wisely avoid the evils with which we are beset in our onward progress, then I would boldly assert, that never since the foundation of the world has the eye of the philanthropist rested on a country which has furnished so grand, so magnificent a theatre for the creation and the display of arts, science and literature, and for the production of all those virtues and high intellectual energies, which so ennoble and adorn the human being and render him the true image of his Maker, as our own most beautiful system of Confederated Republics will then present.

Mr. President, I have done. The great importance and interest of the topic I have so unworthily discussed, must be my apology for having detained you so long.

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