Hoorra!—Only one more quotation from Kennedy, and that because it permits us to take a last fond look at Sims, who re-appears, for a moment, like a meteor on the scene of his past glories!
"Was it not a burning, blistering, withering shame that the cross of St George should be found floating on American soil?" [Here Mr L. H. Sims exclaimed, "Yes, and it will blister on our foreheads like the mark of Cain!">[
Mr Hamlin, a Democratic representative from Maine, one of the pattern New England states, is not far behind his Western brethren—
"Their progress was as certain as destiny. He could not be mistaken in the idea, that our flag was destined to shed its lustre over every hill and plain on the Pacific slope, and on every stream that mingles with the Pacific. What would monarchical institutions do—what would tyrants do—in this age of improvement—this age of steam and lightning? The still small voice in our legislative halls and seminaries of learning, would soon be re-echoed in distant lands. Should we fold our arms and refuse, under all these circumstances, to discharge our duty? No; let us march steadily up to this duty, and discharge it like men;
'And the gun of our nation's natal day
At the rise and set of sun,
Shall boom from the far north-east away
To the vales of Oregon.
And ships on the seashore luff and tack,
And send the peal of triumph back.'"
Mr Stanton, a Democratic representative from the slave state of Tennessee—Polk's own—observes, that war about Oregon
"Would be another crime of fearful magnitude added to that already mountainous mass of fraud and havoc by which England has heretofore extended her power, and by which she now maintains it. Did some gentlemen say that her crimes were represented by a vast pyramid of human skulls? I say, sir, rather by a huge pyramid of human hearts, living, yet bleeding in agony, as they are torn from the reeking bosoms of the toiling, fighting millions."
Peace, this person observes, is rather nearer his heart than any thing else, but
"If she must depart, if she is destined to take her sad flight from earth to heaven again, then welcome the black tempest of war. Welcome its terrors, its privations, its wounds, its deaths! We will sternly bare our bosoms to its deadliest shock, and trust in God for the result."
After all this, our readers will be little surprised to find that a Mr Gordon, from the rich and partially civilized state of New York, whose commercial relations with us are of such magnitude and importance, makes an ass of himself with the best of them.