"The next war with Great Britain will expel her from this continent. Though a peace-loving people, we are, when aroused in defensive warfare, the most warlike race ever clad in armour. Let war come, if it will come, boldly and firmly will we meet its shock, and roll back its wave on the fast anchored isle of Britain, and dash its furious flood over those who raised the storm, but could not direct its course. In a just war, as this would be on our part, the sound of the clarion would be the sweetest music that could greet our ears!... I abhor and detest the British Government. Would to God that the British people, the Irish, the Scotch, the Welsh, and the English, would rise up in rebellion, sponge out the national debt, confiscate the land, and sell it in small parcels among the people. Never in the world will they reach the promised land of equal rights, except through a red sea of blood. Let Great Britain declare war, and I fervently hope that the British people, at least the Irish, will seize the occasion to rise and assert their independence.... I again repeat, that I abhor that government; I abhor that purse-proud and pampered aristocracy, with its bloated pension-list, which for centuries past has wrung its being from the toil, the sweat, and the blood of that people."
Mr Bunkerhoff, from Ohio, and his people—
"Would a great deal rather fight Great Britain than some other powers, for we do not love her. We hear much said about the ties of our common language, our common origin, and our common recollections, binding us together. But I say, we do not love Great Britain at all; at least my people do not, and I do not. A common language! It has been made the vehicle of an incessant torrent of abuse and misrepresentation of our men, our manners, and our institutions, and even our women—it might be vulgar to designate our plebeian girls as ladies—have not escaped it; and all this is popular, and encouraged in high places."
Mr Chipman, from Michigan, thus whistles Yankee-doodle, with the usual thorough-base accompaniment of self-conceit:—
"Reflecting that from three millions we had increased to twenty millions, we could not resist the conclusion, that Yankee enterprise and vigour—he used the term Yankee in reference to the whole country—were destined to spread our possessions and institutions over the whole country. Could any act of the government prevent this? He must be allowed to say, that wherever the Yankee slept for a night, there he would rule. What part of the globe had not been a witness of their moral power, and to the light reflected from their free institutions?" * * * *
Your Yankee proper can no more "get along" without his spice of cant, than without his chew of tobacco and his nasal twang. What follows, however, took even us by surprise:—
"Should we crouch to the British lion, because we had been thus prosperous? He remembered the time when education, the pride of the northern Whigs, was made the means of opposition to the democracy. He recollected the long agony that it cost him to relieve his mind from federal thraldom. Education was an instrument to ridicule and put down democracy."
What Mr Chipman would do—if—
"I appeal to high Heaven, that if a British fleet were anchored off here, in the Potomac, and demanded of us one inch of territory, or one pebble that was smoothed by the Pacific wave into a child's toy, upon penalty of an instant bombardment, I would say fire." * * * * "Now he (Mr C.) lived on the frontier. He remembered when Detroit was sacked. Then we had a Hull in Michigan; but now, thank God, we had a Lewis Cass, who would protect the border if war should come, which, in his opinion, would not come. There were millions on the lake frontier who would, in case of war, rush over into Canada—the vulnerable point that was exposed to us. He would pledge himself, that, upon a contract with the government, Michigan alone would take Canada in ninety days; and, if that would not do, they would give it up, and take it in ninety days again. The Government of the United States had only to give the frontier people leave to take Canada."
Though Michigan has the benefit of this hero's councils, he is at the pains to inform us that Vermont, a New England state, claims his birth, parentage, and education—a fact which we gladly record on the enduring page of Maga for the benefit of the future compiler of the Chipman annals. He closes an oration, scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of Sims, with a melodious tribute to the land of his nativity.